Bluesman Howlin' Wolf moaned in 1956, "I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline."

Sly and the Family Stone warned in 1969, "Don't let the plastic bring you down."

In 2007, you ask a waitress for a bottle of water, she still brings you gasoline. When we finish the bottle, the plastic brings us down.

Americans more than doubled their purchases of personal-sized bottled water between 2002 and 2005, according to the Container Recycling Institute, from 13 billion bottles to nearly 28 billion bottles. The United States, only 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for 17 percent of global bottled-water consumption, according to the Worldwatch Institute.

Nearly all such water comes in bottles derived from oil, commonly called PET for polyethylene terephthalate. Nationally, only 14.5 percent of PET bottles for noncarbonated drinks were recycled, creating 2 million tons of trash that will not degrade for hundreds of years in landfills.

It's estimated that if we were to go on a national campaign to increase beverage-container recycling to 80 percent, the savings in greenhouse gas production would be the equivalent of taking 2.4 million cars off the road for a year.

Many companies imply their water is better than tap water even though bottled water is often tap water. Many companies imply that bottled "spring water" is healthier even though there is no such evidence. Despite that, Americans are willing to pay far more for bottled water.

Even more ridiculous, we are howlin' wolves about $3-a-gallon gasoline. But those little bottles of water add up to as much as $10 a gallon. Some mayors are catching on. San Francisco just banned bottled water at city offices. New York is crusading to lure residents back to the tap.

The U.S .Conference of Mayors, noting how Americans spend $11 billion on bottled water despite the $43 billion that local governments spend to deliver some of the best water in the world, last month passed a resolution calling for the "compilation of information regarding the importance of municipal water and the impact of bottled water on municipal waste."

These stirrings have the bottled- water lobby gurgling in protest.

The International Bottled Water Association said the San Francisco ban by Mayor Gavin Newsom was riddled with "misinformed statements." It cried that Newsom was depriving city employees of a healthy drink that "does not contain calories, caffeine, sugar, artificial flavors or colors, alcohol and other ingredients."

By far, the two fastest-growing individual "liquid refreshment" brands in the United States, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp., are Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani. Both are bottled waters. Both are municipal water!

When Sly and the Family Stone sang about plastic, it was about fake people. There is nothing more fake than people who repackage tap water, then jack you up, calling it "liquid refreshment."

The next time you ask the waitress for bottled water, remember it costs more than gas.

— Derrick Z. Jackson writes for the Boston Globe.