Raincatch: A Jacket for Drinking Rainwater

Winter is just around the corner, and here in Berkeley, that means rain.  For intrepid walkers and runners, it's a time when you can have the trails to yourself.  For this runner, working out in the rain supplies that extra oomph.  Something about splashing along a misty trail with the rain in your face and mud splattered on your back provides just the right amount of inspiration for blasting up hills and careening around tight turns at speeds impossible on dry ground.

And now that rainy day run brings with it one more advantage: an opportunity to self-hydrate.  Two students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design have designed Raincatch, a coat that catches, filters and stores rainwater, allowing runners and hikers to hydrate on the move. This is a healthy version of your grandfather's drink'n jacket.

Joshua Noble and Hyeona Yang, the jacket’s co-creators, believe that access to clean drinking water is “one of the most important issues for the 21^st century.”  Given only two weeks in their design class, they created a jacket that is really quite simple. It collects rainwater, which then runs down the jacket's back, passing through tubes to get purified by charcoal filters and a chemical process. They assembled the jacket using materials from clothing stores, hardware stores, and aquarium-supply stores.

Although Raincatch is still an long way from appearing at your local sports shop, we here at PLAYgreen are inspired by the effort.  And while the design is a bit unconventional, how cool would it be to run around Berkeley in something like this?  

Source and Image: Sierra Club