A nip bottle on a sidewalk in downtown North Adams.

NORTH ADAMS — After five months and some 60,000 nip bottles returned, the city’s pilot nip redemption program has stopped — for now.

The program, which allowed BFAIR’s Massachusetts Avenue redemption center to accept the mini liquor bottles for a 5-cent return, has run out of funding, City Councilor Keith Bona announced at the May 12 City Council meeting. BFAIR officially stopped redeeming nips in early April, according to redemption center director Deb Harpin.

“I am calling [BFAIR] tomorrow because they want to discuss how to continue this,” Bona said at last week’s meeting. “I feel like it will continue at some point but at the moment, the refund is not happening.”

There is still a small amount of funding in the nip program account, said Bona, but often, people wait until they have a stash to return hundreds of nips at a time. He and BFAIR want to replenish the funding before restarting the program so that it won’t run out after one big return, he said.

On Nov. 1, BFAIR began accepting the mini alcohol bottles for a 5-cent return and saw thousands of returns weekly.

The pilot program was created by Bona in response to Police Chief Mark Bailey raising concerns about nip litter on the street and asking the Council to consider a ban.

Within a few weeks, Bona had $1,000 pledged — enough to cover 20,000 nips at 5 cents each. Some additional donations from individuals and other local organizations have helped support the program since.

Thanks to a grant, BFAIR bottle and can redemption center will be taking nips or miniature alcohol liquor bottles, in addition to regular cans and bottles, for a nickel a piece.

In late October, the Public Safety Committee, which was set to discuss the potential nip ban, postponed the discussion to see how the program performed. In February, the ban discussion was further postponed until September.

But unlike Bona and other councilors predicted, the returns did not slow down when winter came. From January to March, an average of 1,854 bottles were returned each week.

Councilor Lillian Zavatsky hoped that the committee would hear from Bailey or other police officers about their thoughts on the program when the discussion returns in September.

“They are out there more than most people and see whether or not there has been an impact,” she said.

Councilor Lisa Blackmer noted that it will have been almost a year since the ban discussion was proposed when it returns to Public Safety in September. She suggested the committee and Bailey look into statewide nip updates and see what other communities may have done in the meantime.

“Maybe there has been a ban, or [communities] have gotten rid of their ban or have more statistics than what he presented,” she said.

Nips are not currently redeemable in the state, unlike regular-sized liquor and beverage bottles, and Bona hoped that the nip program would show the state the need to update the bill.

BFAIR workers Mia Codogni, front, and David Hoover counted nip bottles coming into the redemption center on Friday. In front of them, more of the mini liquor bottles were waiting to be processed for 5 cents each. During the first month-and-a-half that BFAIR redeemed nip bottles, at least a thousand of them were returned weekly.

A bill to revise the current bottle law to include nips was introduced last year by state representatives Brian Ashe, Francisco Paulino, Patrick Joseph Kearney and Steven Xiarhos. On April 6, the bill was “accompanied by a study order,” which means it effectively died and will not move forward this legislative session.