Amanda Roll-Pickering is one of the 100 staff now employed at CAT and she's written this article about its history:
"An impressively steep funicular railway, topped by an attractive timber building, catches the eye from the main road just north of Machynlleth. This is the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) - a Mid Wales institution.
It grew from humble and idealistic beginnings. The increasing awareness of environmental and social issues in the early seventies drew many people away from urban areas to places like Wales, seeking a simpler, human scale, sustainable way of living.
Among those dreamers was a man who could get things done. Gerard Morgan-Grenville had a vision of combining the idealism with the practical to create solutions both human and technical to the problems of an over-developed, over-industrialised society.
The vision took form in 1973 when he came across Llwyngwern slate quarry the site of CAT - an area of slate waste and derelict buildings overgrown with birch trees and rhododendrons.
Word spread fast about the project and an amazing mix of people came together at CAT - ecologists, primitivists, disgruntled academics and, most importantly, pragmatists.
These pioneers rebuilt ruined buildings, established gardens on ground with no natural soil and generated their own electricity. There was very little distinction between work and life. Before long more than 20 people, including 10 children, were living on the site.
Over the past three decades, the project has grown from strength to strength and today CAT is recognised as Europes leading Eco Centre. 80,000 people visit each year to learn about sustainability through our visitor centre, education programme and specialist courses.
CAT still generates its own electricity, so much in fact that surplus is sold on to the national grid. The centre's gardeners, biologists, builders and engineers are regarded as experts in their fields and receive visitors from around the world seeking inspiration.
CAT's outreach is now global - a website, publications and a green mail order service ensure that geography is no boundary to the spread of sustainable ideas."
Written by Amanda Roll-Pickering who works at CAT.
Take our photo tour of CAT's early days
Andrea Neave has fond memories of CAT:
"I fondly recall in my younger day (about 16 years ago) visiting CAT with my friend Adam who knew somebody working there. Lots of laughter and discussions took place, mostly about sewage treatment!. We had a delightful salad for tea. The person we were visiting made me a fork to eat with out of a twig as he hadn't much in the way of cutlery.
As a grown up I make my own children twig forks just like that one for fun. We are going to go and spend a weekend at CAT this summer and investigate sustainable living possibilities for our farm in Gwent.
Everybody I know who has been there tells me CAT is great place and I am really looking forward to visiting again."
