By the numbers, from Time Magazine:

• 1.1 billion - people around the world that the U.N. estimates that lack safe drinking water, a number that could reach 5 billion by 2025
• 8.25 billion - gallons of bottled water Americans drank in 2006, a 9.5% increase from the year before.
• $10.8 billion - water sales last year — all for something you can get virtually free.
• 4,000 - tons of CO2 generated each year — the equivalent of the emissions of 700 cars — by importing bottled water from Fiji, France and Italy, three of the biggest suppliers to the U.S.
• Less than 25% - percent of water bottles recycled, leaving 2 billion lbs. a year to clog landfills.

Infuritatingly for all this waste, American tap water is safe — New York City’s among the cleanest in the world, in fact. San Fransisco, NYC and Salt Lake City local governments have taken measures to prevent municipal spending on bottled water and/or encouraged local denizens to use tap water instead.

Says the Time article,

Bottled-water producers feel they’ve been ambushed. “I think the industry is being targeted unfairly,” says Patrick Racz, CEO of Icelandic Water. For one thing, bottled water weans consumers off soda. “People are making a substitution when they go to the fridge, so instead of getting a cola drink, they’re getting a bottle of water.”

Pretty lame excuse if you ask me. They’ve even taken out full-page ads around the country attesting to the health benefits of bottled water.

Yet, in the words of Allen Hershkowitz, an industrial ecologist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC),”It’s like marketing air.”

Read loads more bottled water resources and statistics here.