Successful business people know how to turn lemons into lemonade. Good products can be almost as simple.

In a world of music-playing phones, internet-enabled refrigerators and satellite-based car navigation, some companies have found success with such low-tech products as urine, mud and even air. This is not the "money for nothing" Dire Straits sang about in its classic hit from 1985, but it's awfully close.

The products that we are highlighting show that successful businesses do not always come from multi-billion dollar corporate research and development departments. Indeed, inspiration comes in many forms for these inventors. But all have figured out how to turn something mundane into something people want.

Consider these examples:

From dirt to dollars. For AHAVA, it's about location, specifically the Dead Sea in Israel whose "black mineral mud ... has been shown to contain healing properties that are ideal for the treatment of a wide variety of joint diseases and skin conditions," according to the company's Web site. It's expensive, too. A 12-ounce container was on sale for $9.99 on Cleopatra's Choice.com.

People wanting a bit of Ireland can purchase four bags of "Official Irish Dirt" along with shamrock seeds for $20.

For baseballs with that major league feel, check out Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, the substance used before each game to remove the factory gloss and make balls easier to grip. It costs $50 for a 32-ounce container. (Remember that regular potting soil costs less than $5.)

The Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn announced this week that they would no longer sell bottled water. According to a report in the New York Times, that amounts to about 670 gallons of water every week since the co-op has nearly 14,000 members.

Meanwhile, across the river in Manhattan, New York Presbyterian Hospital has posted signs for several years advising patients to quench their thirst and even brush their teeth with bottled water and to avoid drinking the hospital's tap water. That's because two patients died from Legionnaire's disease in 2005 and the hospital is sill struggling to lower the level of bacteria in its water.

The hospital's experience is certainly bucking the trend, with a movement underfoot to call attention to the cost of bottled water, both monetarily and environmentally. I received an email not long ago from David Wilk, an environmental activist and publishing executive from Connecticut with whom I have collaborated. David founded Turn to Tap in 2007 to address the negative affects of bottled water. I asked him how much money you can save by switching to tap, and he emailed me his calculations for my family: