Machynlleth, Wales and the Center for Alternative Technology – Tuesday, June 28
We woke up early and got ready for a half-hour drive into Machynlleth, Wales, which is where the Center for Alternative Technology (CAT) is located. CAT is known as Europe’s leading Eco Center, featuring several environmentally-friendly gems from the water-balanced cliff railway to super deluxe compost toilet.
The inception of CAT started in 1974 by Gerard Morgan-Grenville whose mission was to teach people, by example, how to reduce their impact on the environment by living more ecologically.
After 30 years, CAT has continued to grow into an educational hub that employs more than 100 people and has hosted approximately two million visitors throughout the world. CAT is also home to the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education (WISE), which is an environmental graduate school for people wanting to practice a more efficient way of living.
Every exhibition throughout the Center is built with low-energy consuming materials such as slate waste, hemp, timber, earth, hay and recycled paper to name a few. CAT receives power via wind, water, the big fireball in the sky and other natural forces. The café, which is very inexpensive, has been accredited by Taste of Wales, and serves healthy naturally grown food.
There are twenty exhibit stations throughout CAT, and each one teaches the visitor while demonstrating a sustainable approach to common practices such as heating water, using electricity, eating, food production, construction, waste management, etc. CAT also caters to younger generations by adding attractions like the composting worm slide, the mole hole and the adventure playground. The £7.50 entrance fee was well worth the learning experience and inspiration.
Kale rather enjoyed the composting worm slide...
Below is a poem we found in CAT’s summer publication 2010:
Less is More
By Matt Harvey
Can less be more, can more be less?
Well, yes and no, and no and yes
Well, more or less…
More bikes, fewer cars
Less haze, more stars
Less haste, more time
Less reason, more rhyme
More time, less stress
Fewer miles, more fresh (vegetables)
Fewer car parks, more acres of available urban soil
More farmers’ markets, less produce effectively marinated in crude oil
Less coloring, more taste
More mashing, less waste
Fewer couch potatoes, more spring greens
Fewer tired tomatoes, more runner beans
More stillness, less inertia
Less illness, more Echinacea
More community, less isolation
Less just sitting there, more participation!
More wells (not oil ones, obviously), fewer ills
Fewer clean fingernails, more skills
More co-operation, less compliancy
Less complacency, more self-reliancy
Less competition, more collaboration
Less passive listening, more participation!
Less attention defic…, more concentration
Less passive listening, more participation!
(Less repetition)
Less of a warm globe, more a chilly’un
More of a wise world, at least 34 fewer parts of C02 per million
Less stress-related cardio-vascular and pulmonary failure
More nurturing quality time in the company of a favorite clematis or dahlia
More craftsmanship, less built in obsolescence
More political maturity, less apparently-consequence-free extended adolescence
More believed-to-be-beautiful, known-to-be-useful things
Less cheap, pointless, petroleum-steeped stuff.
So Yes, less is more – and enough’s enough.
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