Twenty years ago no-one drank water from plastic bottles. Water came from taps which could be poured into glasses and was available from drinking fountains, and no-one thought any more of it.

Then it was decided that drinking lots of water was good for you and companies, led by the French, decided to bottle it, make it sound like it came from a far purer source than the kitchen tap, and a new market was invented.

Between 1993 and 2010, the UK bottled water market (including water coolers), has grown from just 580 million litres to almost 2.1 billion litres, according to statistics produced for British Bottled Water Producers.

It is a £1.5bn industry, but the problem is not the water being consumed but the vast amount of plastic bottles that have to be produced to contain it.

It was one that was recognised by Americans Richard and Stephanie Smiedt when they were travelling in Asia and passed an open field piled high with factory waste, much of which was plastic from water bottles used once and then thrown away.

They did some research and invented a plastic bottle with a filter which they called the Bobble.

The filter is designed to remove chlorine and organic contaminants from tap water and is good for “purifying” 150 litres of water. Potentially, that is 149 fewer plastic bottles in landfill.

The idea caught on and a sample was sent to Oxfordshire-based Vivienne Cudahy by a friend. She was so impressed that she immediately got in touch with Move Collective, the firm set up by the Smiedts.

After some brief negotiations she landed the contract to distribute the Bobble in the UK, which led to the former Harrods fashion buyer setting up her own company, Auteur, precisely for the purpose.

Bobble was then launched in upmarket store Harvey Nichols and she recruited a friend, Jenny Dahlman, a former account manager in recruitment to help with the surge in demand.

Ms Dahlman said: “It was very successful. Harvey Nichols had a waiting list of 300 people and we had a lot of press interest, which was brilliant.”

Now Bobble is sold across the UK in retailers such as Boots, John Lewis, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer — in fact more than 800 outlets stock the bottle in its various forms.

And Auteur is now gearing up for the launch of the Bobble filter jug from tomorrow. This will be a real test as up until now the filter drinking bottles have had relatively little competition. But with the jugs, they are set to compete head-to-head with firms such as Bicester-based Brita, one of the UK market leaders.

“Traditional water filter jugs perform well, but don’t look particularly good. The other difference is that Bobble does not have the “reservoir” but filters the water immediately,” said Ms Dahlman.

The environmental benefits of the Bobble also stretch to the plastic itself, which is free of BPA, Phthalates and PVC, which are allegedly harmful, and it is also recyclable.

There are also obvious economic advantages attached to owning a Bobble.

A standard Bobble costs under £8 and a replacement filter is less than £6. If a consumer buys a bottle of water every day, then the financial benefits soon stack up.

Auteur orders container-loads of Bobbles from the US which are distributed via a warehouse in Essex, but ultimately the plan is to set up a UK manufacturing facility to boost the environmental benefits further.

It has expanded to employ four part-time staff at offices in Deddington and the workforce is expected to expand soon as the filter jugs come to the market.

After that the next development will be lunchboxes, which are designed to hold a sensibly-sized portion of food along with a Bobble bottle, and Ms Dahlman added that the company is looking to distribute other products now it has gained experience in the market.

Research will come at trade fairs starting early next year. Already Auteur has won the Excellence in Housewares Award at the Progressive Housewares ceremony recently, and the reaction to the Bobble has been impressive.

Clearly everyone wants to continue drinking copious amounts of water and now they can do so without feeling guilty about the waste.