In Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale And Why We Bought It (Scribe, pbk, $33), New York investigative journalist Elizabeth Royte says supermodels and celebrities such as Madonna fuelled the trend during the 1980s.
"Back then, supermodels were the reigning gods, and they were drinking Evian. They were photographed drinking it. They would walk around carrying it in leather slings," she says.
"They were saying they drank the water because it helped them suppress their appetite and it made their skin clear and their hair shiny," says Royte.
Madonna even had Evian on tap at home. And in her 1991 film Truth or Dare, she did more than just drink from the green glass bottle of fizzy water, Royte says. And thus a litre of Evian became a bona fide fashion accessory and a marketer's dream.
"No-one started criticising it until about a year ago, and this absence of criticism helped the industry grow," Royte says.
Today, globally, the bottled water business is worth $US60 billion ($NZ80.23 billion) a year.
Australians guzzle about 250 million litres of bottled water a year while in the United States (33.3 billion litres a year), sales of bottled water surpass beer and milk, Royte says.
But our thirst for bottled water has come at a huge environmental cost.
The processes used to manufacture and fill the plastic bottles, as well as transporting and refrigerating the products, leave a major carbon footprint, Royte argues in her book.
In the US alone it takes 17 million barrels of oil to supply the nation with plastic water bottles each year.
Finally, there's the global waste created by billions of empty bottles each year.
In Australia, only 35% of water bottles are recycled and most end up in landfill, according to the Total Environment Centre's (TEC) Waste and Energy campaigner Jane Castle.
Clean up Australia Chairman Ian Kiernan is also a long-time campaigner against bottled water. "Plastic water bottles are becoming a major environmental hazard," he says.
Kiernan points out the absurdity of paying for something that is available virtually free in every household.
Kiernan says while people complain about petrol prices, many fail to realise they're spending more on a litre of bottled water than they are on a litre of unleaded or diesel.
"In Australia, the cost of buying water instead of drawing it from a tap is comparable to driving a car," he says.
Castle, from TEC, describes bottled water as "a huge con-job on consumers" who are not aware of its environmental and economical impact.
She would like to see a deposit scheme introduced to encourage recycling.
"Certainly, bringing in a container-deposit scheme which would solve the end-of-life issue, which would be a great start."
Royte believes a backlash against bottled water has already begun in the US.
"I think a certain segment of society is dropping bottled water and more will continue to drop it as they learn about it," she says.
"The funny thing is, many of those people were the early adopters of bottled water, people who cared about health and image. But now they care about the planet's health, and they realise they have got to think beyond themselves."
The backlash includes posh eateries, such as Chez Panisse in San Francisco, which has stopped offering bottled water.
Even nuns are taking a stand.
"The nuns have come out, because water is sacred in a cultural value and spiritual value. Churches look after poor people and look after the environment, and they are getting people to pledge and their congregations to give up bottled water," Royte says.
As for Madonna, she has stopped drinking Evian.
But her turnabout apparently isn't complete. She's replaced her Evian with bottled Kabbalah water from Israel, Royte says. - Julia Carlisle.
