Costly Water: Bottled and Sold: The History Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water (Book Review‪)‬

by Peter H. Gleick. Washington DC: Island Press, 2010, 288 pp. Obsession may not be the best word to describe Americans' attitude toward bottled water. Few people are preoccupied with the product; many purchase it without a second thought. But therein lies the problem. As Peter Gleick amply demonstrates, packaged water comes at a surprisingly high price. People in the United States purchase nearly nine billion gallons of bottled water a year, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a product that is virtually identical to that which freely flows from their taps. We engage in such senseless behavior, Gleick contends, because we have bought the claims of advertisers and marketers. Large beverage corporations spend heavily to disparage public water supplies and to tout, often misleadingly, their own products.