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As to the environmental overhead, PET bottles are 100% recyclable, so unless the consumer is clueless, the plastic will be recycled into either more bottles, or rugs, or car parts, ad nauseum. Just because people can throw it in the trash doesn't mean they do.
True. But it's still creating something that to my mind has little real cause to exist in the developed world. You can turn the bottles into other somethings, but that's ultimately just shuffling the plastic around - at an energy cost for the recycling itself, not counting the processing and transportation of the water to begin with. And meanwhile I believe we're still manufacturing plastic from scratch anyway. Eventually I see a time when we just run out of things to turn our plastic into, so I don't think of recycling as a permanent solution. There's signs of that in the city I live in already. If they could turn the bottles into clean water that would be great :D