Whether it comes from a bottle or the tap, drinking water is vital to our lives to provide healthy hydration. People decide to buy bottled water for several reasons, including convenience, quality and taste. In 1977, Perrier introduced the first bottled water in the United States. Until then, it was common for us to drink from water fountains found everywhere. Now that this has changed, it is no longer popular or considered normal to drink bottled water and public fountains are a thing of the past. Bottled water is becoming more and more popular and is the icon of healthy drinks. How did this happen? Well, the bottled water industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing every year. In 2012, bottled water sales increased 6.7%, selling nearly 9.7 billion gallons of water. This equates to $11.8 billion in sales. How has the bottled water industry moved us from often giving away free water to buying bottled water? Most of it has to do with creative marketing. Think about it, bottled water costs anywhere from 750 to almost 3,000 times more than tap water. Yet millions of people still choose to drink it over tap water, even though it turns out they are the same product. Manufacturers need a good marketing strategy to start and maintain sales. Americans often go with the flow, even if a myth can be debunked. For the masses to drink bottled water at such a high price and continue to use it, they need to be convinced that it is the best choice. Bottled water manufacturers have spent millions to get Americans to spend their hard-earned dollars on bottled water. Try to convince us that tap water is bad with misleading advertisements showing that bottled water is better. They use scare tactics... middle of paper... to good effect. Unfortunately, we don't hear the whole story. Many municipalities still don't want people to recycle the lids because they are made from less pure plastic. The other problem is that many water bottles are shipped overseas for recycling. Most water bottles are not recycled into another water bottle. They undergo a process called down-cycling, where the plastic from the bottles is actually used to make lower quality plastic products. These cheap plastic products usually end up in landfills and lead us nowhere. The parts of the bottles that are not recycled are thrown into landfills in someone else's garden. Oil is used to manufacture products but also to transport the product, which also generates pollution. Additionally, the bottled water industry is one of the industries that pollutes our water supplies. Not what I call eco-friendly.