By host Tom Ashbrook:

How thirsty is America for bottled water? Pretty darned thirsty. Every week of the year we now move a billion bottles of water from ground to gullet in ships and trains and trucks. That’s the equivalent of almost 38,000 eighteen-wheelers full of water every week.

Sixteen billion dollars a year now spent on bottled water from Maine, Italy and Fiji. Only a few years ago, we drank almost none. Now, water bottles are choking landfills and some are asking — what are we doing? And tap water is still free.

This hour On Point: the cost of an obsession with bottled water.

Guests:

Charles Fishman, editor-at-large, Fast Company magazine, writer of the recent article “Message in a Bottle,” and author of “The Wal-Mart Effect”

Joseph Doss, president and CEO of the International Bottled Water Association

Gigi Kellett, “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign director for Corporate Accountability International

Philip Singer, professor of environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, and director of the school’s Drinking Water Research Center.