Harvesting natural rainwater to quench the world’s thirst
Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw
As a result of donated funds, RainCatchers are now bringing clean water to four schools in remote regions of Western Kenya. With gratitude I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Mr. Shigeo Ohmori and Mr. Kokichi Nakata from the Youth Summit for the Environment — Kobe, Japan – and Mr. Haysbert for donating time, talent & resources to this cause.
Because of Mr. Ohmori’s, Mr. Nakata’s and Mr. Haysbert’s sponsorship of our rainwater harvesting projects in Africa, thousands of students are now benefiting from having their own source of clean drinking water for years to come. Thank you, Jack Rose
The simplest way to catch, store and deliver clean drinking water is through with a RainCatchrer. Along with impact partner, Raincatcher.org, HUB has installed raincatchers in schools in Africa and also supports efforts to dig water wells.
Unregulated irrigation along the shores of Lake Victoria in Africa has drastically lowered the availability of clean water. Women and children become critically ill through lack of water or usage of dirty water.
The HippoRoller is a heavy-duty plastic drum that can be filled upright, then sealed and rolled like a steamroller across rough terrain. The 24-gallon (90L) tank weighs 200 pounds when full, but the rolling drum has a functional weight of just 22 pounds, so virtually anyone can use it. The current design has been tweaked to ease shipping and transportation of the carriers, which are manufactured in Johannesburg, South Africa. They are distributed mainly by local NGOs to communities throughout southern Africa, along with training on water purification and sanitation.
A single HippoRoller can hold a day’s water for an entire family of five. Great potential here to work with RainCatcher systems to help people transport water more easily and efficiently from a central location in a village out to individul homes. And what an improvement to go…
...from this...
...to this! (All photos: HippoRoller.org)
Another simple solution to the water problem: Rain ‘n Roll.
Mark Armfield is the owner of Armfield Design & Construction, Malibu, California.
MALIBU, California. As a boy on a bike, standing at the edge of Point Dume, gazing towards the blue horizon, Mark realized there was nowhere else to go — “This is it”. Right then he made a vow to love this land and to protect its beauty, and to one day give something back.
Fast forward a few decades and that day is now. After 25 years of working to bring environmental awareness to the construction industry, Mark takes pride in bringing to fruition only those projects that combine extreme beauty and optimum efficiency.
In the push to be environmentally responsible Mark has never forgotten about the very human need for beauty and serenity. The home as sanctuary: This is what the builder tries to create and how the family man tries to live.
Along with many environmentally advanced Malibu homes, Mark’s body of work includes:
President – Malibu Association of Contractors
Director of Malibu Chamber of Commerce
Chairman – Government Affairs / City of Malibu
Member – Malibu City Business Roundtable
Member – City of Malibu Sustainable Building Committee
As a surfer and a builder, Mark gradually became aware of our impact on the quality of the ocean. He has committed himself to learning about what hurts the ocean and what can save the ocean from further harm.
RainCatcher
Beginning at the shore, Mark eventually started looking upstream. This lead him to the sky, to RainCatcher, to Jack Rose. Mark and Jack are studying the effects of the vast runoff from rainfall, through our cities, to the ocean. Together, right here in Malibu, they are designing prototypes for residential rainwater harvesting and storm-water management. This work is their contribution to future generations of Californians.
California RainCatcher houses will collect and store tens of thousands of gallons of fresh rainwater each year during the rainy season and then use this precious resource for landscaping during the long dry season. By the middle of the century, the fulfillment of this design will cut in half the amount of water Southern California must import every year. See photos of completed
projects in the Central Coast region of California by a landscape design company called Earthcraft Landscape Design.
This is a big, slow process that will yield great dividends a half century from now for everyone in California. But many places in the world need the water from RainCatchers right now, so: In conjunction with their local projects, Mark and Jack are bringing the same rain catching technologies to places like Africa and India so that millions of people worldwide will benefit today by not having to suffer and die from water borne diseases.
From the same Point Dume office where they imagine and construct beautiful and brilliant Malibu homes, Mark and Jack create RainCatchers for schoolhouses in Africa. Current projects include two UN Farm Schools for 700 AIDS orphans in Western Kenya.
Jack Rose, founder of RainCatcher.
Jack Rose, Raincatcher: I grew up along the coast of California with a mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, in my back yard — surfing, climbing, skiing — Living in a place where every year, like clockwork, moisture would float in from the Pacific, hit the Sierra, and drop an abundance of rain and snow. These same mountains would later provide the RainCatcher model for my current work.
If I had to give myself a job description it would be: inventor/explorer/friend.
Jack Rose Design Studio — I design interesting houses in all the hideaway places up and down California. Having grown up in a dry climate, rain falling has always been alluring for me. While living on the north shore of Kauai I began catching and drinking rain. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. A couple years later, while living on the rainy Mendocino coast, I continued catching an abundance of delicious rain. So, one day, while enjoying a glass of water-from-heaven I suddenly realized that over a billion people around the world couldn’t participate in this daily ritual that I take for granted. As a designer I gave myself the challenge to come up with a simple, cheap way for all who are chronically thirsty to receive clean, safe drinking water direct from the sky. RainCatcher was born. The purpose and goal: H2O 4 Every 1.
Reversal-of-fortune
The value of rain received, rather than rejected, is immeasurable.
Architecture, up until now, is based on the premise that “Water is the enemy” — we must shed it and get rid of it as fast as possible. Residential, commercial, industrial and municipal architects and planners all adhere to this belief.
At the same time, modern culture has been relentless in promoting this attitude. Turn to the weather on radio or TV and we are constantly told: “It’s going to be a bad day”. . . because there’s a chance of rain. And if it isn’t a bad day here we are shown all the places where it is going to be ‘miserable’, because of rain — Boston, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, you name it.
Generations have been taught to fear nature, to loathe the rain, to complain each time the garden gets watered. None of this rings true. As children we loved the rain. When we weren’t inside playing board games and making forts we were outside discovering new lakes where bean fields used to be — building Tom Sawyer rafts and having big adventures.
A primary purpose of RainCatcher is to sing praise and gratitude for weather — to instigate an attitude shift from “rain is bad, let’s get rid of it” to “rain is a blessing, let’s catch it and treasure it.” When enough of us do this, countless people around the world will experience a Reversal-of-Fortune. Water is as precious a resource as oil. Instead of tossing it aside, one day we will collect it from the roofs of every home and business structure and put it to good use.
As everyone in Africa knows, “WATER IS LIFE”. . .
The purpose and goal of RainCatcher is: H2O 4 Every 1
Fred Mango, Spryte Loriano & Charlie Gay in Nairobi, Kenya, August 2008
Here is Fred Mango from RainCatcher Kenya with HUB (Humanity Unites Brilliance) founders Spryte Loriano and Charlie Gay getting ready to install new RainCatchers at the Jubilee Children’s Center in Nairobi.
Funds for the latest RainCatcher project in Western Kenya have been raised and donated by HUB (Humanity Unites Brilliance). As a result of this action three schools with 700 AIDS orphans have received new RainCatcher systems (tanks, gutters, filters).
Jack Rose and Mark Armfield worked with Father Kizito to bring RainCatchers to his 30 schools in Uganda. As a result of this meeting, arranged by Wendy Lynch, coupled by personal donations from Danielle Light and Lucas Donat, our RainCatcher Uganda project is well under way. Photos soon.
Our goal is a RainCatcher on every school in Uganda.
RainCatcher — The name on the bottle tells the story of what our work is: to bring clean drinking water to everyone. Knowledge has value. We aim to capitalize on something we know to be a ‘Fact of Nature’: More than enough rain falls to earth each year to satisfy the drinking water needs of everyone.
We hear a lot about the “Global Water Shortage”, but the Fact-of-Nature is this: There isn’t a shortage of water given, just a shortage of water received. This can be remedied simply by putting a bucket under a rain storm – millions of buckets, actually, all around the world.
If every school house across Africa, India, China, South America, etc were outfitted with RainCatchers (gutters, tanks & filters), children around the world would have their own source of pure drinking water.
Our goal is to bring RainCatcher systems to every corner of the globe. Here’s how we fund it:
Bottle rainwater everywhere and sell it to those who can afford it. This creates a revenue stream that will bring safe drinking water to those who can’t afford it. Every time someone enjoys a bottle of RainCatcher Bottled Rain they are also buying a drink for someone else. The simple act of sharing will solve the ‘World Water Shortage’.
The following proposal outlines how we do this.
RainCatcher
People in the United States drink over 8 billion gallons of bottled water each year, an amount equal to a few day’s rainfall on the side of one mountain in Hawaii.
PRESENT SYSTEM :
The current practice for servicing the $100 billion annual demand for bottled water is an environmental and economic dinosaur. Centralized bottling plants ship product over thousands of miles, across oceans and between continents. Costing more than the water itself, existing packaging and distribution technologies can, to a large extent be re-invented, replaced with something better.
PROPOSED INOVATION : RainCatcher
Catch rainwater directly from the sky with mini-rainwater collection plants along the West coast of the U.S. and throughout the islands of Hawaii, South Pacific and Indonesia. Instead of shipping drinking water from one part of the world to another, we collect, bottle and distribute drinking water within the same region it will be consumed.
BUSINESS CONCEPT :
The resource and the demand exist side by side, but have yet to be connected commercially in such an efficient, responsible and profitable way. The plan is to build the first prototype along California’s coastline, to be followed by plants all the way up to British Columbia. Next will be plants on the rainy side of each Hawaiian Island, then Tahiti and throughout the South Pacific and Indonesia. Each area will bottle and sell local rainwater using the same RainCatcher label.
MARKETING :
Global sales of bottled water = $100 billion a year.
Selling local ingenuity and products, while creating an international brand.
Promoting a new experience.
Introducing conscious consumerism.
What we are selling is water from heaven. Some ancient traditions consider rainwater to be an elixir. When people first see rainwater on the shelf next to all the others, curiosity alone will move them to try it. Novelty will launch initial sales. Then the unique taste and properties of RainCatcher, along with the environmental choice, will generate product loyalty and repeat business.
Cities are bottling and selling the same groundwater they have been pumping through pipes all these years. Coke and Pepsi realized they could generate a new revenue stream by bottling and selling the same water they’ve been adding caramel coloring to for decades. Yet all of the hundreds of brands of drinking water are essentially the same, coming from under the earth.
RainCatcher is the only one that comes directly from the sky. We are introducing an entirely new product and process, something unexpected and unprecedented.
The marketing possibilities are wide open, as you can imagine. The first company to provide rainwater on a commercial scale will have an immediate, unlimited audience.
The Product Will Sell Itself
TECHNOLOGY :
Combining existing and new, low tech, high efficiency rainwater collection technologies.
Fortunately we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Although the technology for catching and bottling rainwater already exists, no one has yet imagined and initiated this application.
Facilities will be located in areas where rainfall is plentiful and clean. Collection, bottling and distribution plants along the northwest coast will provide drinking water for the western states. The same will be duplicated for Hawaii and Tahiti. Indonesia has thousands of islands where rainwater can be bottled for China.
What the micro-brewery trend has done in the beer business, we are doing in the bottled water industry: Provide a locally generated product that is superior in terms of taste, quality and environmental impact. Instead of shipping all over the world between manufacturer and consumer, the idea is to meet local demand with local resources and ingenuity. Rainwater is a global resource that will be collected, bottled, distributed, marketed and consumed all in the same geographic region. The name RainCatcher will become synonymous with rainwater, the identical product appearing everywhere in the world without the costs and complications typically involved with international shipping, tariffs, etc.
Extensive research and applications of rainwater collection have been ongoing for decades. Our role is to introduce this information and technology commercially.
Overabundance
There is no number big enough to begin to quantify how much fresh rainwater is given to us each year. On just one mountain on the big island of Hawaii an average of 2 billion gallons of rainwater falls each day. That’s 700 billion gallons a year. This, and much more, happens all over the planet. It is an unlimited, untapped resource.
What is an overabundance called? A flood. Alongside the weekly stories about the global water shortage are images of too much water, of floods everywhere. The opportunity for RainCatcher is to become the pioneer and global leader in tapping this resource and making it available to everyone.
RainCatcher Africa — Humanitarian Fast Track
Set up rainwater collection and bottling plants all over Africa, providing both water and jobs. This can be done fast by using giant plastic tarps on hillsides to collect and channel millions of gallons of rainwater into storage tanks and bottles. Profits from the sale of bottled water go to setting up RainCatchers on every school in Africa.
Duplicate this process in India, China, South America. There isn’t a shortage of water given, just a shortage of water received. All we have to do is put a bucket under a rainstorm. It’s that simple.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT JACK ROSE: jack (at) raincatcher (dot) org
The One Cent Solution — Water for everyone at no cost to anyone.
While traveling through Africa I don’t look around and say what’s wrong, I only see what’s missing. As far as solving the contaminated drinking water problem, all that’s missing is the hardware — rain gutters and water tanks.
The big breakthrough for me, of course, was listening to Einstein, who said, “A problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created the problem in the first place.”
A paradigm shift is a complete reversal of attitude and perspective – a change of heart and mind.
The problem of a ‘world water shortage’ exists in the perspective of “There isn’t enough — water or money — to solve the problem”. From that point of view, as Einstein said, the problem will never be solved.
The following proposal offers another approach based on this obvious truth: One of the easiest things a human can do is catch rainwater from the sky.
The One Cent Solution: Water for everyone at no cost to anyone.
The way I see it, every building with a roof on it is a potential RainCatcher. All that’s missing are the gutters and water storage tanks. All that’s missing for a solution to happen is the decision to channel funds in this direction.
The cost of one military tank would buy forty thousand water tanks. That’s a lot of water for a lot of thirsty people. The billions that NASA is seeking for the search for water on Mars, if redirected back to earth, would secure water for everyone. Again, all that’s missing for a solution to happen is the decision to channel funds in this direction.
My primary job is to tell the story to inspire this decision to be made. I will not stop until it is done.
Ironically, the story is one of abundance, not lack, for everywhere I traveled I noticed that there wasn’t a shortage of water given, just a shortage of water received. That changes the focus entirely and lets everyone know that this is a solvable problem.
All that is missing for a solution to happen is the decision to channel funds into buying and delivering rain gutters and water tanks.
After demonstrating that there is no shortage of water resources, the next challenge is to do the same with financial resources.
Here’s how I do that: The One Cent Solution: Water for everyone at no cost to anyone.
Each person who can afford a drink of clean water shares a glass with someone who can’t: Allocating one penny per bottled water world-wide will generate billions of dollars. This will place gutters and tanks on every school house in Africa, India, China, everywhere.
“This year, Americans will drink more than 30 billion single-serving bottles of water. We will drink more than nine billion gallons of bottled water, nearly all of it from throwaway plastic bottles.” – Jon Mooallem, The Unintended Consequences of Hyperhydration, New York Times.
It’s possible that those who can afford a clean bottle of water can help others get a drink as well.
Here’s how we do this: The One Cent Solution: Water for everyone at no cost to anyone.
A dollar + for a 20 oz. bottle of water from the local gas station adds up to over $6.00 per gallon. My proposal is to allocate approximately one cent per bottle, or six cents per gallon, to buying clean water for those who can’t afford it. Nine billion gallons of bottled water x .o6 per gallon adds up to 500 million dollars annually to go directly to setting up rain catching systems all over the world.
Neither consumers nor corporations will ever notice the loss of one penny per bottle. If America leads the way and all other nations follow, there will be enough water tanks, rain gutters and filters for everyone who needs clean drinking water. This = H2O 4 EVERY 1 with the coming of the next rains.
Who could say no to that?
A simple and beautiful solution:Each person who can afford a drink of clean water shares a glass with someone who can’t.
