Not 10 minutes into our morning run earlier this week, Bob Graham skidded to a stop, bent down and picked up the day’s first can.

“Here we go,” he grumbled.

I recognized the bright blue container instantly and noted its familiar location.

“Bud Light,” I replied, “Right on target.”

Bob has retrieved identical cans from the same spot, where a blankety-blank motorist has been tossing them, as regularly as the sunrise.

By the end of each workout, we typically scoop up a heap of other beer cans, along with nips bottles, hamburger wrappers, ketchup packets, coffee cups, cigarette packs, pizza boxes, fried chicken buckets, cookie packages, French fry bags, soda straws, paper napkins, plastic forks and additional debris, suggesting that some drivers must thoughtlessly discard all their fast-food refuse out the car window.

Like our Bud Light guzzler, many litterbugs are creatures of habit. Bob and I could use their disposal sites as GPS waypoints — bear right at the Marlboro pack, keep going past the Dunkin Donuts cup, hook another right at the Burger King wrapper, turn around at the Pizza Hut box and finish just past the Fireball nip.

While popular beer/wine/spirits brands dominate the refuse, lately we’ve noticed a spike in White Claw, Arctic Chill and Truly hard seltzer containers, as well as cans and bottles for beverages that combine alcohol with various juices, teas and so-called energy drinks. It’s not only disgusting and disheartening to deal with this never-ending flow of detritus, but more alarming to consider how many people are buzzed behind the wheel.

I’ve written about this scourge previously and bring it up again because of a new law purportedly intended to help curb roadside litter.

On Oct. 1, Connecticut consumers began paying a 5-cent surcharge on each 50-millileter nips bottle; the state plans to use this money to help pay for environmental programs, including roadside cleanups. Then in 2024, certain returnables will go from earning a nickel to a dime.

My reaction: Big whoop.

While Connecticut deserves some credit as one of only 11 states to regulate bottle and can returns, it’s almost laughable to believe that a five- or 10-cent deposit will have any more impact on a serial litterer than a cigarette-pack health warning has on a chain-smoker.

As far as nips go, the new law doesn’t even make the loathsome bottles redeemable. What’s the point?

Liz Raisbeck, co-chair of Groton Conservation Advocates, is similarly unimpressed with the legislation.

“Unfortunately, the bottle bill did not establish a deposit for nips but rather authorized towns to tax them. This was a big disappointment, as a small tax on a nip bottle will not reduce sales nor slow the nipper from hurling the little sucker out the window,” she told me in an email.

Louis Rosado Burch, Connecticut program director at Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a 120,000-member advocacy group, also trashed the new law.

“Without a refundable deposit, there is no incentive to recycle/pick up those miniatures. Also, there is no guarantee: a.) that the surcharge will generate the type of revenue the wine and spirits industry has promised … or; b.) that towns will actually use this revenue to address litter concerns vs. using that money to patch unrelated holes in their budget,” he said.

If our lawmakers had gumption, they would follow the example set in Massachusetts: ban nips altogether. Also, imposing a bottle and can deposit of a least a dollar would vastly improve redemption rates while reducing litter.

Fewer than half of the more than one billion redeemable alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage containers sold each year in Connecticut are returned for their deposits. The majority are either disposed in trash cans along with household garbage — sometimes, though, people do take the time to separate them with recyclables — or simply tossed on the side of the road.

It’s easy to understand (but not condone) the rationale of drivers who toss beer cans and nips bottles out the window — they don’t want police to catch them with empty or open alcohol containers. But what kind of trolls fling doughnut bags and coffee cups? Or water bottles, tricycle wheels, propane containers, COVID masks, or used diapers? We’ve encountered them all, and worse.

The state’s first bottle bill went into effect in 1980; over the years, it has been revised several times to encourage greater compliance and boost revenues. By 2009, nearly two-thirds of redeemable containers were returned for their deposits.

But most recent statistics, for the three months ending Dec. 31, 2020, show that only 195,237,082 of the 360,844,388 containers sold that quarter, or 49.4 percent, were redeemed. A reasonable conclusion: Many imbibers have become lazier, sloppier, or both.

Of course, the vast majority of people don’t litter. However, while it only takes a handful of jerks to make a mess, it sometimes takes a village to clean it up. Bob and I, along with our wives, Betsy and Lisa, are among countless citizens who regularly pick up trash in their neighborhoods, either as part of organized cleanup campaigns, or just as a routine habit.

Virtue is not exclusively its own reward. Bob and Betsy typically collect about $50 a year in deposits — hardly a windfall, but as Bob pointed out, it pays for the gas when driving to the store with a bagful of empties.

Let’s hope tougher laws, as well as more responsible, considerate behavior by drivers, put them and other volunteer litter-picker-uppers out of business.