After ten years of soaring business, the tide is starting to turn against bottled water.
Shop sales were down by 9 per cent in the year to March to £284million, according to the retail analysts TNS.
This follows a widespread backlash by environmentalists who condemn it as wasteful and even immoral.
UK sales of bottled water had been growing at more than 6 per
cent annually for more than a decade, reaching 2billion bottles a year.
One reason for its success is that many claim not to like the
taste of what comes out of the tap. In some parts of the country there
is a chlorine taint.
However, blind taste tests by Decanter magazine put London tap
water ahead of many brands transported at a premium price from as far
away as Fiji.
Fashionable labels such as Evian, Perrier and Volvic have
recently faced a combined onslaught from Government ministers, consumer
groups and green campaigners.
A 500ml bottle of Evian typically costs 42p in a supermarket, or 84p a litre. That is 840 times the price of tap water, which comes in
at 0.1p a litre.
Among the environmental costs of bottled water are the energy
needed for production, transport and disposal of the bottles. Compared
with tap water, it generates more than 5,000 times the amount of carbon
emissions per litre.
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Transporting bottled water in Britain is estimated to produce
33,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the annual
energy use of 6,000 homes.
The Government's Food Standards Agency has banned bottled water
from its offices along with an increasing number of Whitehall
departments, including Downing Street.
At the same time, restaurateurs across the country have been
shamed into offering diners tap water rather than premium bottles
costing several pounds.
Encouraged by marketing campaigns stressing its apparent health
benefits, many consumers have switched to bottled water in recent years
as an alternative to fizzy drinks - particularly sparkling water, which
accounts for a quarter of bottled sales.
They increasingly tend, however, to refill their bottles from the tap.
The food and health lobby group, Sustain, has been running a
campaign to put pressure on Government departments and official bodies
to switch to tap water. Campaigns director Richard Watts said: "This
looks to be the first ever recorded fall in bottled water sales.
"It is a significant development. The message about bottled
water being unnecessary, expensive and damaging to the environment is
finally getting through.
"Around the world, the authorities in cities like San Francisco
and, morerecently, London, are making determined moves against bottled
water. The backlash has clearly started."
The Consumer Council for Water's chairman, Dame Yve Buckland,
said: "The bottled water industry spends millions investing in their
brands and that's what people are paying for when they pick up a bottle
of water.
"There is no health advantage in drinking bottled water instead of water from the tap."
The British Soft Drinks Association, which speaks for producers,
said: "Bottled waters strictly conform to the very highest standards in
hygiene, provenance and sustainability.
"Despite common misconceptions to the contrary, bottled water
usually travels much smaller distances than most other food and drink
products.
