Bottled water

The problem: Bottled water isn't cheap. At an average cost of $1.22 per gallon, we spend 300 times more on packaged H2O than we'd spend to drink it from the tap. In most cases, this expense is far from worth it, since both types of water are equally safe, taste identical, and in some cases even come from the same source. There are exceptions, however — people living near private wells do not enjoy the same rigorous testing as those whose water comes from public sources, and some public sources are not properly screened, as was recently seen in Flint, Michigan.

How it happened: The first documented case of bottled water being sold was in Boston in the 1760s, when a company called Jackson's Spa bottled and sold mineral water for "therapeutic" uses. Companies in Saratoga Springs and Albany also appear to have packaged and sold water. Today, popular soda companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Co own many bottled water companies.