Let’s face it: A lot of people are pigs.

Just look at the sides of roads, strewn with beer cans, coffee cups, candy wrappers, fried chicken bags, pizza boxes, ketchup-stained napkins, crumbled cigarette packs, soda straws, dirty diapers and other items too disgusting to mention – all mixed in with a shining sea of empty nips bottles.

What happened to the “wonderful” law, enacted in October 2021, that was hailed as a way to end litter by adding a 5-cent surcharge to every nip sold in the state? Municipalities were supposed to use that money – $4.2 million, representing the sale of a staggering 84 million nips in the first full year alone – to clean up roadside litter. To date, only a handful of towns in southeastern Connecticut are doing so.

True, some have come up with good ideas – starting July 1, Montville plans to pay civic groups $500 for five hours of trash-picking – but this pilot program, along with other proposals, doesn’t address the root of the problem. That is: Sometimes, only minutes after trash has been picked up, another troll will drive by, open the window, and let fly a fresh load.

“I don’t understand what they’re thinking,” Ledyard Mayor Fred Allyn III said the other day. He, Ledyard Conservation Commission member Betsy Graham and I were discussing how the town should spend its $23,519 share of the state nips distribution fund.

Allyn said he likes the idea of paying nonprofit organizations to pick up litter, but wants to see how the program works in Montville before launching a similar initiative in Ledyard. In the meantime, the town may consider some modest purchases, such as special nets to keep nips from washing into storm drains and eventually winding up in Long Island Sound, he said.

Graham has taken a hands-on approach. She, her husband Bob, and a small group of neighbors regularly pick up nips and other debris on their morning walks. For the past six months, she and Bob have been recycling non-returnable paper and metal containers, cleaning and redeeming returnable cans and bottles, properly disposing of other refuse, and separating all the empty nips into a large garbage bag. To date, they’ve collected more than 1,000.

The 1.7-ounce bottles can’t be returned to liquor stores for redemption and are too small to be captured by recycling sorting equipment, so they wind up getting incinerated with other household refuse. Graham said a friend plans to use the nips she and her husband have collected for an art project.

Focusing so much attention on these tiny bottles also overshadows the larger problem of fast-food containers, cans and other debris that make up the bulk of roadside litter.

“Seeing all the trash saddens me. It tells me that our country hasn't nurtured a culture that values and respects our fellow citizens, environment, and world,” Graham said.

She said children have to be taught at an early age not to treat the planet “like a garbage dump.”

I agree; every kindergarten should include anti-litter curriculum.

In addition, the nickel nip surcharge should be recycled into a much larger deposit, so that people would think twice about flinging them out the window.

Better yet, ban nips altogether. Their main appeal is that they can be chugged and easily tossed, so motorists don’t get caught with an open container of alcohol.

It’s bad enough that so many empties wind up on the side of the road, but much more troubling that the road is filled with so many impaired drivers.