People who have drinkable water but buy water bottles are straight up evil, not to mention fucking stupid. I’m constantly baffled by it.
i think a lot of people don’t trust that their water is drinkable since the water infrastructure in the Amerikkkan reich is highly neglected. Water that is deemed safe regularly turns out to not be because they don’t test it often enough. This has led to a vague distrust of an underfunded government, and a recourse to buy bottled water from private corporations because “at least it’s purified.” yeah it’s stupid, but there’s a series of rationalizations behind it. That’s not even getting into reactionary conspiracy theories about fluoride and hormones.
If only they understood that buying bottled water inevitably leads to the public utility water being more contaminated with microplastics in the long run.
If it ever came out that the bottled water industry lobbied against improvements and upgrades to public water infrastructure so peoples’ trust in it would be diminished to the point that they would rather buy bottled, I would not be surprised in the slightest.