Bottled Water Sales Plunge Hits Nestle As Consumers Cut Costs, Take Note Of Environmental Price

[hatrack]

For some it was pure, bottled sophistication; for others, money for old rope, the epitome of the disposable, consumer society that took hold in the 1980s. Either way, mineral water was yesterday confirmed as a casualty of the credit crunch when Nestlé said that sales of the bottled drink were plunging.

Nestlé, whose brands include Perrier and S. Pellegrino, the “champagne of waters”, is the world's biggest food company and the largest bottled water producer. Sales of its water declined by 4.1 per cent in the first three months of this year, Western Europe being particularly badly hit. There was a fall of 9 per cent in the British market last year.

In 1980, only 30 million litres of bottled water were sold in Britain, less than half a pint per person. That grew to 1.3 billion litres in 2007 — but now, as well as cost-conscious consumers trading down to tap water, mineral water has suffered an environmental bashing. David de Rothschild, a scion of the banking dynasty, is building a raft made of plastic bottles to travel from San Francisco to Sydney, taking in a visit to the East Garbage Patch — an area of the Pacific said to be strewn with plastic bottles. He hopes to illustrate the environmental impact of bottled water consumption, claiming that the industry is synonymous with a “throwaway society”.

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The company has also co-founded the National Hydration Council (NHC), an industry umbrella group. The council recently launched a campaign entitled “You ought to drink more water”, reminding consumers that on average people need to drink 1.2 litres of water a day to rehydrate.Jeremy Clarke, director of the NHC, said that two dismal summers had hit sales: “The other major factor is economic. This is our first recession as a mature industry. In the early 1990s, the market was nowhere near as developed and the phenomenal growth we have seen in the last decade has been when times are good.”

Ed. - emphasis added . . . as well as :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article6150721.ece

[monmouth]

1. Bottled water, what a scam. Hahaha....n/t

[Skink]

2. Beer's next.

:hangover: Then coffee.

[abbeyco]

3. Good! Maybe Nestle will stay out of Colorado

They want to "appropriate" a lot of water in the Yampa River valley for bottling use. We'd have to end up buying it back from them in the event of drought.

Go back to chocolate and stay out of our water!

[XemaSab]

4. The funny thing about this is

that I decided a $20 bottle of Bombay plus Calistoga water was cheaper than wine or beer, so I have switched to bottled water as a cost-saving measure. :D

[pscot]

5. Our well water tastes pretty strange

so we've been using bottled seltzer. I just bought a soda machine from soda stream. It makes relatively cheap seltzer, which masks the taste of our water, and the ecological impact is minimal. And Nestle can go suck on a gas pipe.

[depakid]

6. National Hydration Council?

:eyes: