GREEN-thinking Herefordshire College of Technology has opened an eco-friendly cafe on its Holme Lacy campus.

The Straw Bale Cafe is made of renewable local materials including cedar and straw bales from the campus estate.

Most of the highly-insulated building was pre-fabricated offsite and is powered by solar panels and a wind turbine.

College principal Ian Peake officially opened the cafe last Thursday with Holme Lacy student James Davies.

Mr Peake said the design was “fantastic”

and also thanked students for growing the vegetation for an outside plant wall.

“It’s a great excitement to open this cafe. I can’t remember the last time we opened a building at Holme Lacy,”

said Mr Peake.

The extension was designed by Hewitt Studios of Bath, which was also behind the revamp of HCT’s Folly Lane site.

The cafe could be the first part of an ambitious £25 million plan to rebuild the campus for the 21st century.

The planning application should be discussed next month despite admissions that the money for the project is not yet available.