About half of the state's more than 8,000 bars and restaurants that serve alcohol are recycling their bottles and cans to comply with a new state law, state officials estimate.

The law, which went into effect Jan. 1 as a measure to reduce landfill waste, requires establishments that serve alcoholic beverages to salvage glass, plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

The recycling will produce a projected 50,000 to 75,000 tons of additional recyclables -- mostly glass beer, wine and liquor bottles -- across the state annually. That will provide raw materials for manufacturers and reduce the waste stream. Even so, the reused containers represent a tiny fraction of the tons of trash that reaches landfills each year.

"This law has caused quite a stir," Scott Mouw, the state recycling coordinator, said at a conference of the Carolina Recycling Association in Raleigh. "There is a lot of scrutiny as to what is happening in North Carolina."

At the Mellow Mushroom, a pizza restaurant in downtown Raleigh, the new law prompted the restaurant to expand recycling efforts it embraced voluntarily since it opened six years ago. It already uses pizza boxes from recycled paper and collected some bottles and cans. After the law went into effect, managers put more recycling bins around the restaurants.

"With the new law, we started doing all liquor bottles and wine bottles in addition to the beer bottles we were already doing," said Kyle Watson, a manager at the restaurant.

LoRita Pinnix, a staff attorney for the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, said the law is so new, the commission hasn't seen any violation reports yet. She said fines for lawbreakers would range from $200 to $500 per violation. But Pinnix said the commission is encouraging compliance rather than taking enforcement actions at this point. Businesses are required to file a recycling plan when they apply for renewal of their state permit to serve alcohol.

"A year ago, people were really resistant to the idea of recycling," Pinnix said. "I think we are seeing a good bit of compliance."

Some local governments -- including Orange County, Greensboro and Wilmington -- are providing pickup services, though they're not required to by law. The city of Raleigh collects recyclables at businesses in the downtown business district, and provides support to establishments elsewhere in the city.

For the three manufacturers of glass in North Carolina, the law will mean additional raw materials near at hand.

Paul Smith, manager of recycled glass for Owens-Brockway Glass Container, a worldwide manufacturer of glass containers and bottles, said the company's glass plant in Winston-Salem uses 110,000 tons of glass a year. About two-thirds of the glass is imported from other states, primarily states that have bottle deposit laws.

"We're not doing this to be altruistic," Paul Smith said. "It saves us money. We will use every bit of glass we can get."