The design was inspired by the texture of organic fabrics, with the contrast of rich colored woods. We wanted to do something elegant, but trendy, and that incorporated the modern feel of SC41’s branding. This site includes valid CSS and XHTML, WordPress Blog, email signup, Flash goodies here and there, and tons of useful eco information.

Here’s a fantastic, and simple idea to reuse rainwater. It was originally designed as a contest entry for Design for Poverty (and it won first place, GOLD). It’s such a good idea, I think it would be very easy to create your own for home use. It not only reuses rainwater, but puts to use plastic bottles that would normally be discarged.

Here’s an excerpt from Yanko Design. You can also find all winners after the jump.

GOLD – Rain Drops by Evan Gant (United States)

Rain water is a largely untapped resource, especially in many developing countries where clean water is scarce. Water harvesting consists of three main components: a catchment area (generally a roof), a gutter system and a water storage area. The water storage area is by far the most expensive portion of this system, which makes it out of reach for many families. The RainDrops system simply allows people to adapt standard plastic bottles to an existing gutter system to collect rain water. This changes water storage from the most to the least expensive part of the system. These are much easier to clean and replace than larger storage units. The repurposing of these plastic bottles will also give value to many bottles that are otherwise headed for landfills. Corruption in the water sector is a real problem in many developing countries. The scalability of this system helps to give more power to the communities in need… more at Yanko Design