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  Aging & Attitude

Remember sticking out your tongue to capture rainwater after a baloney sandwich, if a glass of Kool-Aid was not available. The strong visual enters my mind reading an article in our local paper, The News Journal, by Tom Knox. The headline, “Ormond Beach start-up hopes to tap bottled rainwater market,” hints of an entrepreneurial spirit enhanced by a Made in the USA theme and intrigues me.

Florida has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and needs to create jobs. Larry Curran, the retired accountant written about in the article, likely shares my view that retirement is highly overrated. Larry is 64 years old and opening a bottled-rainwater plant.

I keep reading.

Curran concerned about manufacturing plants polluting groundwater near his neighborhood, began using rainwater for swimming to showering and eventually drinking water. He shared 5-gallon buckets with his neighbors and developed a bottled rainwater business plan after researching collection on-line. His company, Choose Rain, sells a 16 oz bottled rainwater for $1.15 locally at Love Whole Foods, Peggy’s Whole Foods and Michael’s Health Food. Curran is in the process of moving into new headquarters and seeks additional funding, so consequently buys bottled rainwater for his label, Choose Rain, from Texas Rain.

I purchased several bottles at Love Whole Foods in Ormond Beach. The taste is different; subtle, sweet, almost tasteless, like water, before we started taking out and putting stuff in.

A message on the bottles reads, “When water evaporates, the tiny drops mingle in the clouds, like nature’s spa in the sky. There they soak up the sun’s purifying UV light, get zapped by the lightning’s ozone, and then all nice and clean head back to earth.  At our Welcome Station we catch the rain before it hits anything nasty on the ground.”  And continues to explain nature’s process is replicated here on earth before put it in a biodegradable bottle.

Larry can be contacted at Larry@chooserain.com.

Texas Rain has a plant in Smithville Texas.  “We believe it’s the largest fixed capture rainwater collection site in the world,” says David Schraub, Founder, President, CEO, and self identified “mad Scientist,” and environmentalist with additional ideas about solar energy. You can capture the true scope of the company in this video http://www.kxan.com/dpp/living_green/drink-rainwater-to-boost-solar-power . What they do is impressive.

However TankTown, the company that bottles Cloud Juice, in Dripping Springs, Texas, has been collecting rainwater longer, since 1994. You got to love the perspective; that all water is rainwater at some point, so why not capture it before it goes into the ground and is subject to pollutants.

Richard Heinichen, Founder, says, “There is nothing in rainwater. It is naturally soft and made safe for drinking easily and without chemicals.”

Who knew?

Heinichen claims a few firsts for the industry and that “water snobs say they taste a difference. You can order a case of Cloud Juice (16 oz. bottles) online for $11.50, about fifty cents a bottle.

Ordering rainwater is probably the way to go, the cost of a Tank Town home collection system for four people is between $10,000 and 15,000 dollars. You can purchase his book, “Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically Challenged for $15.00 and attempt the work yourself.  I like this man’s humor.

It is encouraging to learn we have water alternatives. Imagine if towns built rainwater plants powered by solar energy.

I am thinking differently about rainwater, how about you?

                                                                              . . . Just Saying