NORTH ADAMS — Tired of seeing nip bottles litter the street? A new North County program has already taken in thousands.

During the first month-and-a-half of BFAIR’s nip bottle program, which pays five cents per bottle, at least a thousand small liquor bottles were returned each week.

As of Friday morning, the Bottle and Can Redemption Center had taken in 17,495 nip bottles from Northern Berkshire residents in its first seven weeks, returning roughly $875 to residents. The center still has funding to process another 27,220 bottles. Director of employment services Deborah Harpin said the bottles come in mostly clean.

"My concern is at this rate, funds could run out by Spring, and that is when we would see how much cleaner areas are from these bottles," said City Councilor Keith Bona, who first had the idea for the nip program.

Nips are not currently redeemable in the state, but in October, Bona said he asked if the center could take them if he secured funding for the returns. Within weeks, he had $1,000 pledged — enough to cover 20,000 nips at five cents each. In total, ten donations have funded the returns, totaling $2,235, including a recent $300 contribution from Northern Berkshire Solid Waste Management.

"It seems like every time I start seeing the funds go down, we get a bump from somebody," Harpin said.

Payouts will continue while funding lasts.

Since Nov. 1, Harpin said the center has received bottles from residents in North Adams, Williamstown, Adams and Cheshire. So far, bottles have not come in from Pittsfield or farther south.

The center records nip returns by hand counting each batch before logging them. While they haven’t tracked totals by municipality, large-volume contributions from North Adams and Williamstown stand out.

Harpin said many people were picking up bottles that had clearly been on the ground for a while. She also heard of creative uses for the program: one mom had her son collect nips as punishment for school misbehavior — and he got to keep the cash. Another student donated a collection from the Wheel Estates near their home for school extra credit, while others are using the earnings for holiday shopping.

"I was kind of surprised, I did not realize it was that bad over there," she said, referring to the littering near the mobile home park.

Returns range from as few as five or ten bottles to several thousand at a time. The biggest processing days so far were Nov. 8, when 2,927 nips came in, and Nov. 29, when 3,000 arrived.

Once BFAIR accounts for each nip, they are collected separately from the rest of the bottles and cans and set aside for Bona.

"I want to showcase the large pile of nips gathered over the past few months to our state officials to push for progress on the bottle bill," he said. "Any refund not only helps clear bottles and cans from the streets but also supports individuals and causes that collect them for funds."

The current state bottle bill does not provide for redemption of nip bottles. Last year, a bottle bill passed by the state Senate did include nips as redeemable like other cans and bottles, but the House did not advance the initiative.

"We are very lucky to have an organization like BFAIR running a redemption center," said Bona. "If other communities have similar redemption agencies, they can see this model works and should consider doing it also. The more communities that do it the more proof state elected officials may need to get a statewide program established."

Harpin said that those interested in donating funds to the nip redemption program should make checks out to BFAIR with the memo line: "Nip program."