One of the great marketing triumphs of the late 20th century was bottled water. Turning a commodity into a retail product uncapped huge revenue for companies such as Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and Pepsico (NYSE:PEP). The question now, however, is how fragile is the business? A troubling trend has top restaurants taking bottled water off of their menus due to environmental concerns.

According to CNN Money's Martinne Geller, New York's Del Posto restaurant and other restaurants owned by Joseph Bastianich are discontinuing bottled water, citing the resources squandered in transporting waters long distances. Perrier, for example, must be shipped from its source in Vergaze, France. 86% of all water bottles end up in the landfill. A study by the Pacific Institute's Peter H. Gleick and Heather Cooly found that bottled water required up to 2,000 times more energy to deliver than tap water.

I hope the following article out on Reuters isn't wholly accurate. I can see the logic of what's being reported, however. According to the item, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) could be reducing the valuable real estate in its stores that is devoted to bottled water from popular brands. This includes The Coca-Cola Company's (NYSE: KO) Dasani and PepsiCo, Inc.'s (NYSE: PEP) Aquafina. This observation is being sourced to analyst Bill Pecoriello of ConsumerEdge Research. He believes that Wal-Mart might be trying to focus on the value consumer by offering more shelf space to generic brands.

We Americans are a funny lot. In another era, we valued thrift and fiscal conservatism. But no longer. These days we're all living La Vida Loca in the consumer economy.

Yep. We love to spend. And although there are some ominous signs on the horizon that the party may be coming to a close, the party ain't over yet. In the spirit of fun, AOL has a new feature celebrating the vices that represent the best ways to part with your hard-earned dollars. I couldn't help but agree with many of them. I opine on some additional money-wasters below:

Bottled Water
It's water. And last year we spent more on it than on iPods and movie tickets. This Fast Company piece says it all. Thirty years ago, the article says, bottled water was a blip on the business screen in this country. But tastes change, apparently. Last year, Americans spent some $15 billion on bottled water, from Poland Spring to upscale Fiji Water. The Coca-Cola Co.'s (NYSE: KO) Dasani and PepsiCo's (NYSE: PEP) Aquafina, the top-two bottled waters in the country, are admittedly just purified - and nicely-packaged tap water!

Cable - You're paying how much for cable each month? And you're getting....2,000 channels of crap, plus maybe some decent sports now and then. The cable companies promise something for everyone, but you still have to wade through somebody else's definition of entertainment to find your own. There's no bigger waste of time or money. You might be amazed at how much entertainment you can rent cheaply on DVDs, or even download from the internets. Try going to your favorite sports bar for the ESPN offerings you feel you can't miss, and enjoy them with like-minded buddies. Even more un-American? Try getting rid of your cable and availing yourself of all that sudden free time.

New Cars
Yeah, yeah we all love that new car smell, but that's about all you're getting when you plunk down your cash for a brand new vehicle. According to Edmunds.com, the average new care loses 12.2% of its value in the first year. Some cars depreciate even faster. A one or two-year-old vehicle can cost thousands less and still offer low mileage and reliability. It'll look good, too. And nobody ever needs to know you didn't buy it new off the lot. Now breath deep: Smell that? It's the scent of a good deal.

Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP), which are betting that people's thirst for bottled water will continue to grow, would probably prefer that the public ignore an experiment that Penn and Teller did on their Showtime series a few years ago.

Using hidden cameras, the magicians videotaped unsuspecting people at a restaurant who were being served glasses of what they thought were expensive bottled water by a steward. What they didn't know was that their beverage came from a hose. The program is called "Penn and Teller [explicative deleted]," which is exactly how I feel about the bottled water business.

The hype around popular brands, including Vitaminwater, whose corporate parent Glaceau Coke recently agreed to buy for $4.2 billion, fizzes upon closer inspection.

While there are people with bad water and unsafe water, most Americans have perfectly fine water coming out of their taps. In fact, as FastCompany points out, the two leading brands, Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani, are purified municipal water. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other experts have repeatedly pointed out that bottled water isn't as strictly regulated as tap water. An NRDC study actually found that 33% of the waters it tested "violated an enforceable state standard or exceeded microbiological-purity guidelines, or both, in at least one sample."

"There are very few differences between the health benefits of bottled and tap water except in isolated circumstances," said Greg Kail, a spokesman for the American Water Works Association, a trade group representing operators of water systems, in an interview. "In North America, we all enjoy some of the safest drinking water in the world."

Last week, the mayor signed an executive order banning the use of city funds for the purchase of single-serving water bottles, and also banned the sale of bottled water on city-owned property. It's all part of the city's effort to become more environmentally friendly and less wasteful, and residents who sign an online pledge not to buy bottled water can get a free stainless steel water bottle. The city also recently outlawed the use of plastic grocery bags.

In an interview with Newsweek, Newsom said: "These people are making huge amounts of money selling God's natural resources. Sorry, we're not going to be part of it. Our water in San Francisco comes from the Hetch Hetchy [reservoir] and is some of the most pristine water on the planet. Our water is arguably cleaner than a vast majority of the bottled water sold as 'pure'."

While there are no major public companies that sell only bottled water, companies like The Coca Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) could be adversely effected if the anti-bottled water trend catches on nationally. Coke and Pepsi own Dasani and Aquafina, respectively.

Discovered this little item in Motley Fool's S.J. Caplan article, Stocks With Scruples: "Starbucks (SBUX) and Pepsi (PEP) signed an agreement to distribute Ethos Water, a company acquired by Starbucks last year and founded to focus attention on the world water crisis and to assist children around the world in obtaining clean water." Company site, Ethos Water, explains their mission which should please investors seeking socially-responsible investment opportunities, and also the many critics that continue to challenge large US companies to do more good as global Corporate Citizens.