The word is out: You don’t need to pay $2 for a bottle of water. Actually, you don’t need to spend anything on water. It falls for free from the sky. But if you insist on buying the bottled variety, there’s a desperate price war going on, and half-liter bottles are going for as little as 10¢ apiece.
The combo of being bad for the environment and bad for the pocketbook has doomed bottled water to lagging sales. As a result, retailers have gotten aggressive, attempting to attract buyers with steep discounts.
As the WSJ reports:
This month, PepsiCo Inc.’s Aquafina brand sold at some grocery stores for as little as $2.99 for a 24-pack of half-liter bottles — less than a penny an ounce and about half of its typical price. Still, that wasn’t as cheap as the private-label brand at supermarket chain Kroger Co., on sale for $2.49.
That breaks down to a little over a dime per bottle. This makes the $4 price tag of a bottle of water at the ball park seem more absurd than ever.