There's been a lot of emphasis the past few years on using reusable water bottles. They're marketed across multiple media platforms; we carry them on trips and during workouts. "Filling stations" at drinking fountains keep track of how many single-serve water bottles have been avoided via reusable bottles.
And yet the bottled water market continues to swell. As Jim Johnson writes from The Packaging Conference in Austin, Texas, this week, the consulting firm Beverage Market Corp. says that in 2021, bottled water made up nearly 25 percent of the U.S. beverage market and surpassed the record that carbonated soft drinks previously held.
The vast majority of those sales — 71 percent — were for single-serve water bottles.
Check out Jim's stories from this week, about the growth of bottled water and alternatives to plastics packaging, and keep an eye out for more stories from the conference.