As sales turn flat amid eco-concerns, water marketers are stepping up efforts to reobtain customers and are affecting into pricey flavored waters

By Christopher Palmeri and Nanette Byrnes

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The once red-hot bottled water industry has lost its radiate. The $12-billion-a-year business has gotten whacked in the past year by the weak economy, an environmental backlash against plastic bottles, and competition from trendy canteens, often filled with tap take in water. That has left water marketers taking drastic steps to win back consumers, including a 3D Super Bowl ad and investments in the Fijian rain forest.

U.S. consumers gulped 8.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, a 2.3% greaten from the anterior year, according to the research firm Beverage Marketing. That’sitting a sharp decline, though, from the 8% to 12% annual growth the business enjoyed earlier in the decade, when in the same state 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.

Some of the biggest players in the industry are now reporting disappointing results. Industry leader Nestlé, owner of the Perrier, Poland Spring, and Arrowhead brands, says its water sales were flat in the U.S. through the highest nine months of 2008 and down 3% globally. At Coca-Cola (KO), volumes of "still" beverages remained flat in the third quarter, due largely to declines in its Dasani brand. PepsiCo (PEP) saw its noncarbonated drink volume fall 5% in the same period. Sales of its No. 2-selling Aquafina reproach. fell by fold digits. The faltering economy is of course the biggest moot point, as companies and cash-strapped consumers divide back on everything from trips to the convenience store to deliveries of five-gallon jugs. That has prompted a price declared hostilities, with 24-bottle cases selling for as little while three-for-$10 in supermarkets.

The environmental copy is close behind. Green activists obtain been agitating for years that quite those billions of formative bottles were an eco-disaster. Recently, their complaints have gotten heard. Cities like as Seattle and San Francisco have told their municipal offices to discontinue buying water in small plastic bottles. And high-end restaurants in New York and Los Angeles that used to fatten up customers’ checks by pushing "sparkling or tap" have stopped for anxious of being seen as environmentally incorrect.

Don’t blame us, says Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Assn., a buying and selling collection. He’s quick with stats that say plastic water bottles delineate just 0.3% of the waste in landfills, and points to recycling programs such as single in Hartford, Conn., to what residents get store coupons for returning used bottles. He notes that plenty of other refreshments get served in plastic. "It’s just unfortunate people are turning it into a tap-water-vs.-bottled-water issue," Doss says. "Consumers are making other potion choices, including teas, soft drinks, and juices."

That’s a standing Nestlé is also vexation, putting messages on its bottles reminding customers that a typical 12-oz. soda contains 10 tablespoons of flatter and that substituting a bottle of water every day would eliminate 3,560 tablespoons of sugar a year. Nestlé has also been a leader in reducing the amount of plastic used in its bottles from 15 grams two years ago to 12.5 grams now. Later this year it will release a new version of its "eco-shape" bottle that will contain without more 10 grams, equable though the lighter bottles straight-edge some consumers as quiet to spill. "We had to teach mob, flimsy is companionable," says Kim Jeffery, leader executive of Nestlé Waters North America.

Other companies are also brushing up their eco-credentials. Groupe Danone, maker of Evian, is transporting its bottles by train in Europe to lesson the conversion to an act of exhaust-spewing trucks. Fiji Water—which had to lay off 40% of its staff in December due to a weakened sales view—launched any educational Web situation called Fijigreen.com and is contributing funds to reduce logging on the South Sea islands where its water is sourced. This month, Coke opened a bottle-to-bottle recycling found in Spartanburg, S.C., that will application old bottles to produce enough soft as being nearly 2 billion new 20-oz. bottles every year.

Coke and Pepsi, meanwhile, have substantially cut back advertising notwithstanding their Dasani and Aquafina brands, according to market researcher TNS Media Intelligence. Instead, the beverage behemoths are cranking up spending on flavored waters, for what one. they be possible to require higher prices. Coke paid a staggering $4.1 billion for Glaceau, maker of the Vitaminwater brand, in 2007. Since then it is heavily promoting the brand as a sports drink, with spots featuring athletes airing on the ESPN (DIS) cable networks. Pepsi, meanwhile, is featuring its SoBe Lifewater in a 60-second, 3D ad during the Super Bowl put upon the body Feb. 1.

When it comes to what’s cool, though, the bottled water business must at once compete with a hot unused product: refillable bottles made by such companies as Sigg, CamelBak, and Kleen Kanteen. And for now, at least, the tap-water crowd has the high ground in the battle over who is greenest. "The bottled water transaction hasn’t figured out a way to address the fundamental fact that municipal pipes are the most environmentally familiar way to distribute water," says Paul Shustak. His company, KOR Ideas, sells a reusable plastic "hydration duct" made, in case you’re curious, without any hormone-disrupting Bisphenol A.