Environmental Trends 2002
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Surface Water Use
Cumulative Volume of Water Licensed for Bottling Per Year

SOURCES: BC Ministry of Water, Air and Land Protection, 2002. NOTES: Licenses are for surface water only; the use of groundwater is not licensed. Surface water includes springs that naturally reach the survace, even if only for part of the year.
Trends in volume of water licensed for bottling
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Bottling water is a relatively new use of licensed water in British Columbia. The first licenses for this use were issued in 1972 (13,267 m3/yr).
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The volume of water licensed for bottled water sales has increased dramatically in the 1990s. As of February 2002, 9.4 million m3/yr were licenses for this use. This is still a tiny fraction of the total volume currently licensed for all uses.
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Relying on bottled water over water provided from local watersheds is usually inefficient, as bottling, packaging, and transporting water in small amounts requires large amounts of energy.
For detailed information, including graph data, see In-Depth report [pdf].
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