If we care about plastic waste, why don't we stop drinking bottled water? The Guardian's Simon Usborne is asking everybody to change their habits. "We have all seen the damage plastic waste is doing around the world – but sales of bottled water have continued to grow," he writes. Sales in the UK were worth a record £558.4m in the year ending last November, an increase of 7%, according to the latest figures from market analyst Kantar. Separate data from the analysts Nielsen show that last year English people guzzled more than 2.2bn litres of bottled water, including "take-home" and "on-the-go" products. That's an annual rise in volume of 8.5%. Plastic has never been so hated. At the same time it has never been used so much.