I was looking at a website dedicated to banning bottled water. My first thought was the standard conservative/libertarian, "What is it with these crusading would-be despots, who feel the need to micromanage my groceries at gunpoint?!"
A more considered reaction though is that I don't actually disagree in principle with their objections to bottled water. I don't really know that the environmental impact is actually significant, but there is something wasteful about paying money for water in a bottle. We used to get by just fine with tap water and drinking fountains--in fact, I recall making fun of idiot rich people who paid for fancy bottled water supposedly from the French Alps. But now the wonder of capitalism found/created the need for it among the masses. That's what capitalism does--incite and manipulate our appetites to create needs. The whole system is set up to wear down our self-control so that we can have constant economic growth. The only effective brake on it is the law, so the natural response of a certain segment of people who want to do something about our gross slavery to stupid appetites to resort to the force of law.
I'm not trying to justify petty laws like this, but it seems like they might be a natural or necessary result of the unleashing of appetite that capitalism is engaged in. Laws against single-serving bottled water just weren't necessary 30 years ago because it more-or-less didn't exist. But someone invented it and sold it to the public, and now the genie is out of the bottle (so to speak). If one were to grant that the harm is significant enough to be of public concern (which is dubious), then--well--we'd need a stupid law to deal with stupid water bottles.
I don't think the harm of bottled water, on its own, is that significant--at least in this country where we have efficient garbage collection systems, and most people are conscientious about using them. But you could argue that it's harmful as a part of the broader unleashing of thoughtless appetite and abandonment of thrift and self-denial.
This may ultimately just be a restatement of Chesterton's observation that "When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."
