I guess we all get taken in by slick marketing campaigns but the marketing people must have shocked even themselves at the success of their collective campaigns promoting bottled water over the past few decades.  At the start of the 1980's before all the bottled water silliness the marketing guys must have had sleepless nights at the task that lay before them.  "er Boss, are you sure.  You can get water out of the tap, why would people buy it from a shop in a bottle at over inflated prices?"

Well we did buy it, in bucket loads.  In 1980 Britain consumed 30 million litres of bottled water which by 2007 was over 1.3 billion litres.  Plastic bottle waste, bulging land fills and beaches strewn with plastic bottles have been raising awareness of the plastic bottle problem over recent years and it seems that the tide of bottled water sales, at least in Western Europe is finally turning.  Nestle is the largest bottled water producer in the wold owning brands such as S. Pellegrino and Perrier and has recently announced that in the first three months of this year it's sales of bottled water have declined by 4.1% and in Britain last year the fall was 9%.  

Going into recession it is often the luxury items that go first so the fall in bottled water sales is no great surprise but I hope that this can be the start of a step change in peoples habits.  Simply re-using a plastic bottle again and again, filling it with tap water can save you a fortune and the environmental benefit is enormous.  The Wottle, designed by Orla Kiely offers a stylish alternative to re-using standard plastic bottles.