First, let’s start with the baseline: your kitchen faucet. In the United States, a gallon of tap water costs roughly less than a penny. That’s right. For the price of a single gum ball, you could shower for ten minutes, make coffee, and water your grumpy fern.
If you buy one gallon of water from a vending machine at the park, you’ll pay about $1.50. That’s a markup of, oh, about 15,000%. You are paying for the privilege of not looking like a peasant carrying a bucket. Congratulations, you’re now a water aristocrat.
But wait—the real fun begins when you get fancy. A single 16.9-ounce bottle of Fiji water? That’s about $2.50. To fill a gallon using those bottles, you’d need about 7.5 of them. That’s $18.75 for a gallon of water that flew halfway across the planet in a jet. The water itself is fine. The carbon footprint is wearing a Chanel suit.
