Coca-cola has the contract for the United terminal at LAX (and maybe the rest?), so all water sold at all retailers in the terminal need to be Dasani, Smart Water, or Evian.

But as part of a good works initiative, they also successfully lobbied to ban selling plastic water bottles at LAX to (ostensibly) reduce plastic waste. So while soda bottles are excluded from the ban and are still sold in plastic, you can only buy water there in glass bottles that raise the perceived value of the water and are less offensive when overpriced.

As a result of their efforts:

1. It's cheaper to buy coffee, tea, or soda at LAX than it is to buy water itself.

2. Customers have the luxury of choosing the brand of water that best represents their class image: $5 Dasani, $7 Smart Water, or $9 Evian