About CCAT

Our Vision

CCAT strives to effectively demonstrate sustainable living through the promotion of environmental and socially responsible behavior and community building. Student driven at its core, CCAT supports student engagement and innovation to create practical Appropriate Technology demonstrations. Contributing to local, national, and international networks, CCAT seeks to be an information resource center on Appropriate Technology and sustainable living, accessible to people across the world. 

We seek to critically examine assumptions surrounding technologies and promote a more holistic systems approach to the thought process behind and the use of technology in society. Through integration into the Humboldt curriculum the organization brings the ethos of sustainability directly to students, challenging them to experiment in the living laboratory that is CCAT. Operating as a consensus-based collective, CCAT works to bring a variety of viewpoints and experiences into the organization, creating a comprehensive and diverse view of what it means to be a demonstration site and education center for Appropriate Technology.

Our Mission

CCAT strives to demonstrate that living lightly on the Earth is both practical and rewarding.

• CCAT seeks to accomplish its mission by:
  • Demonstrating appropriate technology in a residential setting
  • Providing hands-on experiential learning opportunities to Cal Poly Humboldt and the surrounding community
  • Collecting and disseminating information about Appropriate Technology
  • Examining the ethical and social consequences of technology

Guiding Principles

• Students teach students
• Lighten human impacts on the built and natural environments
• Efficient utilization of existing resources
• Experiential hands-on learning opportunities
• Constantly seek to refine the definition of “sustainability”
• Deconstruct or challenge social assumptions and preconceived notions regarding technology
• Be community-centered and facilitate community building
• Promote progressive and diverse strategies to create positive societal change
• Cooperation: collaboration, negotiation and compromise, and consensus decision-making
• Demonstrate inter-disciplinary living and learning

A Brief History

CCAT is a live-in demonstration home and educational center for appropriate technology and resource conservation. We are located on the Cal Poly Humboldt Campus in Arcata, California. Motivated by an ethic of “education by example,” CCAT offers tours, workshops, and opportunities for hands-on involvement to university students and the general public.

CCAT began in 1978 when a group of students, with the support of faculty and community members, renovated a dilapidated house on the university campus and initiated an experiment that continues today. CCAT works with fifteen Humboldt classes a year to incorporate new appropriate technologies into this living laboratory in sustainability.

The impressive result of these students’ work: CCAT uses less than five percent of the energy consumed by the average U.S. house, produces almost no waste, and serves as a national model for appropriate technology.

Just as important as what CCAT does, is how it is done. Three students live in the house and direct the program for one-year periods.  Student employees keep operations going. Being directed, staffed, and funded by students makes CCAT a place where young adults become leaders; it nurtures creativity and hones professional and technical skills. CCAT helps to infuse Humboldt with a practical idealism and a desire to serve the global community.