• Business Week, Monday, February 2, 2009 11:30 AM

Having read numerous stories already about the trouble bottle water is facing, I actually was surprised to read that U.S. consumers consumed 8.9 billion gallons of the stuff last year, a 2.3% increase from 2007, according to the research firm Beverage Marketing. But that's down from an 8% to 12% growth rate just a few years ago, write Christopher Palmeri and Nanette Byrnes, when "such celebrities as Paris Hilton posed with Evian bottles and consumers drove around with cases of bottled water in the backs of their cars and SUVs."

One problem has been green activists pointing out that all those billions of plastic bottles are detrimental to the environment. But Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association, says that plastic water bottles represent just 0.3% of the waste in landfills, and he points to innovative recycling programs such as one in Hartford, Conn., where residents get store coupons for returning used bottles.

The bottled water business must now compete with a hot new product: refillable bottles made by such companies as Sigg, CamelBak, and Kleen Kanteen. "And for now, at least," Palmeri and Byrnes conclude, "the tap-water crowd has the high ground in the battle over who is greenest."

Read the whole story at Business Week »