Kick the Bottle

"Regular tap water is just fine," he says with a chuckle that suggests a stating of the obvious. "But we live in a marketing world." According to the city's purchasing department, the new anti-bottled policy resulted in a savings of more than $10,000 between November and July compared with the same period in 2007.

In one of its clearest victories to date, TOTB pressured PepsiCo into agreeing to print "Public Water Source" on its Aquafina label. "If this helps clarify the fact that the water originates from public sources, then it's a reasonable thing to do," says Michelle Naughton, a Pepsi spokesperson. Ray Crockett, her counterpart at Coca-Cola, disagrees. "The FDA's definition of purified water does not require [disclosing] the source," he has been quoted as saying. "We believe consumers know what they're buying."

Or at least some do. Probably about the same percentage as those who know that Evian spelled backward is naive.