Bottled water sales down

Written by Tamsin McCahill "3 on 10 November 2011

We’re pretty sure that watercooler moments have gone out of fashion, but here’s something that might hasten their demise – every man, woman and child in the UK drank 36 litres of bottled water in 2007.

Not exactly, of course, but last year we in the UK spent nearly £2 billion on bottled water between us, drinking an average of 36 litres each. That’s up from 29.6 litres five years ago.

Environmentalists hold the bottled water industry responsible for around 1.5 million tonnes of plastic waste across the world annually. To be fair, little of that comes from watercoolers, which generally have re-usable bottles, but it’s a mountain of plastic, all the same.

Now, though, it seems that the fizz might be going out of the market. Back in February, the Consumer Council for Water urged restaurateurs to serve tap water, and Ken Livingstone launched London On Tap, which aims to encourage tap water drinking in the capital. At the same time, the BBC’s Panorama asked whether anyone needed bottled water anyway, and the public began to become more aware of the scale of the plastic problem.

Since then, head of the Civil Service Sir Gus O’Donnell has suggested that government departments stop serving bottled water. In recent days, US researchers have even poured cold water on the belief that drinking eight glasses a day (nearly two litres) has any health benefits.

So, 2008 doesn’t look like a good vintage for bottled water, but new water industry research shows that sales had already fallen by 4% during 2007, before all of this year’s negative publicity. The drop is being attributed to last summer’s rotten weather, but we’re not convinced – at the height of 2007’s floods, the loss of a Gloucester water treatment works led to millions of bottles being handed out.

IMAGE by Flickr user marcelometal

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