Bottling Tap Water
Admittedly, all I got out of this is a bit of a chuckle, but that's because I've been aware of the fact for some time.
The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission: Its bestselling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water.
You have to admit, they've done a damn fine job of marketing and selling the product, and you can't argue with the profit margins.
A half-liter of Pepsi's Aquafina at a Tucson convenience store costs $1.39. The bottle contains purified water from the Tucson water supply. From the tap, you can pour over 6.4 gallons for a penny. That makes the bottled stuff about 7,000 times more expensive, even though Aquafina is using the same water source.
Well, look on the bright side, given that municipal water sources are far more strictly regulated than bottled water is, this at least ensures that the water is safe to drink. You do have to admire the marketing genius behind all this though; figuring out how to charge people a massive premium to buy what they get practically for free out of the tap. As with many things, you're not paying for the product, you're paying for the packaging. And as the article notes, in this case the packaging is in the form of plastic bottles derived mainly from petroleum and often thrown into landfills, which makes the cost of bottled tap water even more costly than it seems.
