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 of 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, lets get rid of it” to “rain is a blessing, lets 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

Jack Rose and Mark Armfield

Water is the sleeping giant issue of the 21st Century and we all need to wake up about it. FLOW opens our eyes about the greatest threat of our time – the global water crisis. It is a compelling and passionate film. Its engaging narrative will grip the viewer. — Robert Redford

Check out the trailer and a review of the film, below.

MOVIE REVIEW

‘Flow’

Irena Salina’s documentary looks at all things water and the effects a dwindling supply has on health, prosperity and security.

By Kenneth Turan, Times Movie Critic

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the quietly apocalyptic “Flow” makes a good case that what’s going on with our planet’s water supply should make you very, very afraid. Any film that begins with a bleak W.H. Auden quote (“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water”) is not going to be a ray of sunshine in anyone’s life.

Made over a five-year period by director Irena Salina, who went all over the world and talked to an impressive list of experts, “Flow” (which also stands for “For Love of Water”) is a smartly done, involving look at a number of interrelated water issues.

For one thing, it seems that the planet is simply running out of water, which, given our dependence on it, is not a good thing. “We have wars going on over oil,” one of the film’s authorities says. “Water can be oil all over again.”

Also a problem is that as a society we are terminally polluting what water we have. “Flow” opens with a shot of India’s Ganges, kind of the poster image for polluted water, and it tells us that water-borne diseases kill more people annually than either AIDS or wars.

It turns out, however, that these kinds of problems are not limited to the developing world. Rocket fuel seems to have made its way into some American water systems, and herbicides such as Atrazine, banned in the European Union, are still in wide use over here.

More unexpected is “Flow’s” examination of the bitter, at times physical, conflicts that erupt when major corporations have tried to privatize water in parts of Bolivia, South Africa and other countries.

From the companies’ point of view, they are providing a service by bringing safe water to areas that don’t have it. But if the need to make a profit means that safe water will be priced above what the poorest people can afford to pay, those folks will continue to use the unsafe but free alternative. It is a dilemma we are likely to hear more about in years to come.

One of “Flow’s” most intriguing segments concerns bottled water, the alternative of choice for society’s most prosperous elements but a liquid that turns out to be less regulated and possibly less safe than what comes through the tap. In addition, we’re told, society could provide pure water for everyone on the planet for what we pay for the bottled kind. It’s something to think about, as is this entire film.

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

We are proposing to do the same with drinking water. From Maui to Nairobi to Santa Monica people will be able to enjoy a local product. And every time they do this, someone less fortunate gets a drink as well. After people become familiar with the taste and quality and environmental positives of harvesting and using rainwater they will then be able to turn their houses into RainCatchers and, with the coming of the next rains, go from being a water consumer to a water producer. RainCatcher households will have cases of their own glass bottles to fill from a tap in their kitchen — and keep a full case in the car at all times — and the empties go through the dishwasher and get refilled.

Simply by turning the umbrella upside down we have already begun the water revolution here in California — with plans to bring bottled rainwater to every corner of the earth. Our first RainCatcher Bottling Plants are being designed right now for sites in the Santa Monica Mountains and Kenya. Already, we have people in other states around the country waiting to become franchise partners. People all around the world are waiting to work with us on this project.

Throughout Africa and India and China it’s a matter of life-and-death.

That’s why we are expanding our efforts now. When it comes to rainwater the cup is neither half empty or half full, its overflowing. With a great sense of joy we are catching and sharing this amazing abundant natural resource.

Jack Rose & Mark Armfield, 2008 — the year of gratitude.

Jack Rose in Kenya.

H2O 4 EVERY 1
The RainCatcher Story

by Jack Rose

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.

Water for everyone at no cost to anyone.

A global clean-water shortage

A U.N. agency report calls for action to save lives and energize economies by boosting supplies and sanitation.

By Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2006

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — While people in wealthy suburbs of Africa use water to maintain lush lawns and fill swimming pools, many slum dwellers struggle to obtain the crucial resource and pay much more per gallon for what little of it they can get, according to a United Nations Development Program report calling for an end to “water apartheid.”

At the same time, dirty water is the second-leading cause of death among children globally, after respiratory infections. It kills 1.8 million children younger than 5 each year, more than do HIV/AIDS, malaria, war or traffic accidents, says the U.N. report released Thursday in Cape Town.

“In the year 2015 they plan to send a spaceship to Jupiter to search for water, yet in Africa or India we can’t get water to people who need it,” Kevin Watkins, the report’s author, said at a briefing for media in Johannesburg.

The report’s main contention is that if countries increase access to clean water and sanitation simultaneously, the rates of child survival in developing countries can rocket “almost overnight,” Watkins said. Globally, 2.6 billion people have no access to proper sanitation. The 1.1 billion people who don’t have clean water use about 1.3 gallons a day.

“It is hard to find anything that has a greater impact on human life than water,” Watkins said.

In cities such as Dar es Salaam, capital of Tanzania, people pay more for water than do New Yorkers, Watkins said. The water and sanitation crisis in sub-Saharan Africa slowed economic growth by 5% of gross domestic product per year, more than the region receives in foreign aid, the report says. A big increase in spending on water and sanitation would pay for itself in economic growth.

“No other investment could bring greater benefits,” Watkins said.

Collecting water is a colossal waste of labor, he said, with the burden falling overwhelmingly on women and girls. Sub-Saharan African women spend about 40 billion hours a year walking and queuing to collect water.

Some countries spend much more on their military than on water.

In Pakistan, where diarrhea caused by dirty water kills 118,000 people each year, the government spends 0.1% of its budget on water and sanitation. It spends 47 times that on the military. India, where 450,000 die of diarrhea annually, spends eight times more on its military than on water resources, and Ethiopia, which has one of the highest rates of infant mortality due to lack of clean water and sanitation, spends 10 times more on the military.

The global cosmetics industry is $200 billion.

I know all too well there is no way to be here without being permanently changed. Such is my bond with Africa.

I give myself completely — blending with this place, these people, inventing a tomorrow where everyone has clean water to drink, everyday, just like we have at home.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for — and so I ask and will ask, over and over and over again, until it is done.

If NASA can ask for billions of dollars to search for water on Mars, then we can ask the same for water here on Earth.

If the DEPARTMENT OF WAR can ask for 20 million dollars for one tank, then we can ask the same for 40 thousand water tanks. (1 army tank = 40 thousand water tanks, the equation of common sense)

Resources allocated for water exploration in space, redirected back to Earth, would provide clean, safe drinking water for everyone, almost overnight.

This isn’t philosophy or politics, it’s hardware: tanks, gutters, filters — distributed through the many non-profits already in the field, doing good work, bringing as much water as they can.

It’s just a matter of hardware. We have the resources, why aren’t we sharing all this? There’s far more than we could ever use.

Soon, the RainCatcher documentary will tell the story of ‘Water for Everyone’, featuring the historical, geopolitical, natural resource and humanitarian expressions of the relentless quest for water – Bringing to the big screen for the first time images of people all over the world catching and using rainwater.

Simple solutions for everyday problems will be be discovered and revealed and woven through the story.

Dramatic threads will include water wars and water woes, and amazing displays of nature’s abundance.

Example: One day’s rainfall on one mountain in Hawaii is equal to the amount of bottled water Americans consume in one year.

There are many such spigots all around the Earth. The RainCatcher documentary will put a bucket under each one and tally the catch, showing how supply far exceeds demand.

The film will clearly show there is no shortage of water given, just a shortage of water received. The gift has been offered, but we are required to meet it half way, we must put a bucket under the rain storm.

A billion buckets, actually. The film will spotlight all the clever ways people are already doing this around the world, including interviews with the inventors who dream up unusual ways to catch rain, store it, clean it and bottle it.

And the film will also show designs of the future, where every golf course is a RainCatcher, every shopping center parking lot, the rooftops of giant commercial and industrial buildings, and every new house is built with a ten thousand gallon water storage tank buried under the back lawn. (I’m creating the model for this in Malibu, near the High School)

There are villages in India with laws requiring homeowners to catch and collect all the rainwater that falls on their roofs. California will have the same law 20 years from now.

We’re not talking rocket science here. Just tanks, gutters & filters. That’s all it takes. That’s all I’m asking for.

There will be a day when clean, safe water is available for everyone. I have seen it. This movie points to that day with passion, grace and hope.

The problem is clear: 5 million die each year from exposure to contaminated water. Billions lack consistent access to clean water. Fortunately this is a solvable problem, a matter of hardware. My wish list has only three items on it: tanks, gutters and filters.

‘Water for Everyone’, the RainCatcher documentary tells the story of many people in many places already catching as much rain as they can, but needing more hardware.

Who among you can help me make this movie, tell this story and get this hardware to everyone who needs it?