Bottled Water and Other Casualties of the Recession

It looks like the bottled water industry is one of the casualties of the recession.

From the WSJ:

Nestle SA, the world’s largest food and beverage group, reported on Wednesday a 3% drop in its first-half profit as it missed sales forecasts and trimmed its outlook, according to MarketWatch.

The company’s weakest segment? Its water division, which is responsible for about 10% of the company’s total sales, and includes brands such as Perrier and San Pellegrino. Sales contracted about 3% in the division, the second straight period of decline.

Analysts say the drop is owed partly to growing environmental and health concerns about bottled water — and partly to the global recession, as cash-strapped consumers trade down to tap water.

To add insult to injury, it’s not just consumers that are cutting back, it’s disappearing from the corporate conference rooms as well.

I guess the bigger question this might pose is are we all cutting around the edges — eliminating the little indulgences — or are we going to truly adopt a simpler less luxury filled life? Items like bottled water would seem to become more or less habits, and when circumstances force us to abandon them, the usual result is that we find we really don’t miss them all that much. They really didn’t do much to enhance our life.

So, once that lesson is learned, do we continue to trim? Do we find that one less Coke a day is not that big a sacrifice? Is the comfortable couch that just looks well broken in, not shabby, going to work fine for a few more years? Do we discover that life without car payments makes the perfectly fine five-year-old car something to hold onto?

I suspect that the answers to these questions and many similar ones is going to be yes. In many respects we’re relearning lessons that our parents and grandparents tried to teach us. If those lessons stick, they will shape some rather large changes in the overall economy. As individuals, we might very well come out of this with some rather improved sets of values.

Comments

[TinyTim:]

"the drop is owed partly to growing environmental and health concerns about bottled water — and partly to the global recession,"

Never understood the lure of bottled water.
Restaurants and hotels are fine with tap water and ice in pitchers.

Most bottled water is just supposedly "purified" water and the PET bottles leach more harmful chemicals back in. At least there's a market for recycled PET.

Another consumer fad down the drain.

Aug 12 03:53 PM

[ChickenLips:]

Smart people who plan their financial futures with due diligence have been living like this for years, that's why they are not suffering too badly during this recession. It's the free spending idiots who are now being forced to play catch-up. I'm kind of glad this recession happened. It's a slap in the face that we needed badly. Unsustainable lifestyles contribute nothing but unproductive debt and they also harm the environment.

Aug 12 07:33 PM

[Bruce Vande...:]

I remember as a kid thinking that paying for water was really stupid. I have actually done it at times though recently thinking water was better for you than soda (it is!).

Now, after reading about various chemicals that can leach out of plastic I may go back to a canteen like I had used to have long ago.

Of course in some places tap water tastes really bad.

Aug 12 09:20 PM

[Old Trader:]

"I remember as a kid thinking that paying for water was really stupid."

Actually, the above comment (and this article) suddenly made me recall the old fable about the grasshopper and the ant. It dawned on me, that the current situation is that very fable writ large.

Aug 13 09:17 AM

[Snitzer:]

At home its tap water, away from home its bottled water as a lesser evil compared to sodas. That is, of course, after my obligatory pot or two of coffee. I'm also one who could never quite understand drinking water that has traveled thousands of miles in trucks/ships when the water here at home, straight out of the tap, (well water, I'm in the country) tastes as good or better.

Aug 13 11:23 AM