As our economy starts to recover from the recession there is one industry that is actually seeing a decline for the first time in over five years. The sale of bottled water has fallen dramatically this year as the industry is being attacked by environmentalists, consumers and people who have realized that tap water is almost free. Nestle, the United States largest provider of bottled water, reported that their sales have dropped by over 2.7 percent for the first half of the year.

Upon hearing this news environmentalists started celebrating as they have been hoping for this decline since bottled water started to gain in popularity. Bottled water has been gaining in popularity for a while now and has actually started to climb the list of most popular drink. In 2008 it was the third most popular beverage only losing to soda and milk.

There are estimates that bottled water is going to continue on this downward decline for a while. Even though sales of bottled water have not seen a decline until this year overall consumption of water declined by over 100 million gallons between 2007 and 2008.