Bottled water is a classic example of profiting off of regulatory arbitrage.
In well-developed countries, bottled water is easy money: move to a friendly jurisdiction, ship a transportable product out, and sell to a self-selecting, discretionary customer base at obscene markups. It's pure profit.
In less-developed countries, bottled water is enabled by and further perpetuates structural inequality: it provides clean water to those who are willing and able pay for it, without the infrastructure and maintenance load of municipal piping, dealing with governments, or having to be exposed to risks that coincide with this inequality, including theft, leaks, and distributed contamination.
It's bad to perpetuate structural inequality within a country but not between countries? Or do you also agree that it's wrong for developed countries to have clean tap water because it gives their citizens an advantage over citizens of poorer countries? Preventing disease is very simply a good thing. How can you possibly say that you want people to be sick just to make life more fair?
In well-developed countries, bottled water is easy money: move to a friendly jurisdiction, ship a transportable product out, and sell to a self-selecting, discretionary customer base at obscene markups. It's pure profit.
In less-developed countries, bottled water is enabled by and further perpetuates structural inequality: it provides clean water to those who are willing and able pay for it, without the infrastructure and maintenance load of municipal piping, dealing with governments, or having to be exposed to risks that coincide with this inequality, including theft, leaks, and distributed contamination.