  The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of
the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an
alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density
perturbations are due to fluctuations of the inflaton field itself. The basic
assumption of the curvaton and inhomogeneous reheating mechanisms is that the
initial curvature perturbation due to the inflaton field is negligible. This is
usually attained by lowering the energy scale of inflation thereby concluding
that the amount of gravitational waves produced during inflation is highly
suppressed. We show, contrary to this common lore, that the curvaton and the
inhomogeneous reheating scenarios are compatible with a level of gravity-wave
fluctuations which may well be observed in future satellite experiments. This
conclusion does not involve, as in the slow-roll inflationary models,
embarrasingly large field variations in units of the Planck scale. As a working
example, we illustrate the recently proposed stringy version of old inflation.
