MARKETING - So cool to hate bottled water - Filter and container makers are wise to the latest green trend.

The company that makes Brita water filters teamed up Monday with Nalgene, a manufacturer of reusable beverage containers, to launch the FilterForGood campaign, aimed at weaning people off throwaway bottles.

"Refilling our own personal water bottle with filtered water from the tap requires far less energy and wastes almost no resources relative to bottled water," said Josh Dorfman, a spokesman for the campaign and the author of "The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living."

He called it "an easy thing to accomplish with potentially big results" -- for the environment and, though he didn't mention it, for sales of Brita filters and Nalgene bottles.

Brita, which is owned by Oakland-based Clorox Co., and Nalgene, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. of Waltham, Mass., are two companies piggybacking on Americans' plastic-water-bottle remorse. More than 1.5 million barrels of petroleum go into the production of the 38 billion plastic water bottles Americans toss every year.

It was smart marketing that persuaded people that they needed to buy their own personal disposable carriers of gourmet water in the first place, and smart marketing that the anti-plastic forces used to educate the country about the evils of the trend.

Now, companies that sell bottled water, the bottles themselves and other water-related products are taking the environmentalists' lead by touting their Earth-friendliness.

"There's a race to trumpet that kind of thing," said Jeffrey Klineman, an editor at BevNet.com.

And it seems to work. Sigg USA, which promotes its reusable aluminum bottles as eco-friendly and stylish -- "It's not what you drink," the Sigg slogan goes, "it's what you drink it in" -- has seen sales shoot up 200% in the last three months, said Steve Wasik, the company's general manager.

Siggs are carried in Whole Foods and REI stores, among others; a 20-ouncer goes for about $20. Musical acts like the Fray and Jack Johnson sell them at their concerts. At New York Fashion Week in September, runway models and stylists working for seven designers will carry Siggs filled with tap water under a deal inked with Aveda, a unit of Estee Lauder Cos. that is sponsoring the enterprise.