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 isnt 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 cant 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

People in the United States drink over 2.5 billion gallons of bottled water each year, an amount equal to a single days’ rainfall on the side of one mountain in Hawaii.

The resource and the need exist side by side. The RainCatcher is a small mountain placed in the path of the coming rainy season. Instead of one big mountain, the idea is to scatter thousands and thousands of little ones over an entire continent. All these small efforts add up to the same result: billions of gallons of life-giving water.

Like the yurt, like the circus tent, the RainCatcher is set up in a day by the people who will be harvesting the water. The cost is minimal. Materials needed: some rope, tarps and tent poles, and as many plastic water tanks as can be rounded up. For a while, more rain will fall than we will be able to catch, but our goal is to catch enough in each region so that everyone can enjoy, year round, the simple pleasure of a clean glass of water.