CAT (Centre for Alternative Technology)

What is CAT?

"CAT is an education and visitor centre which demonstrates practical solutions for sustainability. We cover all aspects of green living: environmental building, eco-sanitation, woodland management, renewable energy, energy efficiency and organic growing." -Quote from www.CAT.org.uk

CAT has grown from it's humble beginnings to be a major player in eco-thinking, beside their more modest successes such as the highly popular visitor centre which demonstrates methods of sustainable living and emerging alternative technologies they run a graduate school with a range of postgraduate degrees in environmental architecture and renewable energy, year round courses focusing on a wide array of green building methods and are involved in numerous local projects such as the Coed Gwern woodland management.

Relevance to OSE

In many ways this group resembles the ideological and organizational structure of OSE, they have the same focus on sustainability through design and high quality yet simple methodology. Unlike OSE they've got a highly established 'base' and many years of experience of getting involved in local projects, certainly they may be an interesting case study for anyone thinking about the practicality of communal eco-living on an research and education based facility; i don't imagine their are too many other examples.

They also have various free information packages and an extensive collection of books on alternative and esoteric technologies available in their shop.

They're also a group who could benefit greatly from the tools in the GVCS, here for example they're teaching about Sawmills as part of a sustainable woodland management system.

Resources

http://info.cat.org.uk/ - A good collection of free information

http://forum.cat.org.uk/ - Interesting talk and debate