Green Options

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The Gort Cloud:
The Invisible Force Powering Today’s Most Visible Green Brands
by Richard Seireeni with Scott Fields
240 pp. Chelsea Green

It is like what Van Jones called the “invisible network of networks.” Everyone who is in it (and some who stand outside it) know it is there, but they just aren’t sure how to define it, or what shape it takes.

In a new book called The Gort Cloud, branding expert Richard Seireeni takes a stab at capturing the moving target of social networks, sustainability, and green business and captures it with the perfect metaphor — a cloud. But Seireeni doesn’t use any old cloud for his metaphor, the book gets its name from an amorphous field of stellar debris called the Oort Cloud. Seireeni writes:

“I began to think of this particular green network as something tangible with a mission and with a collective membership of like-mined people. It wasn’t a single community. It wasn’t a movement, It defied easy definition.”

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is getting a little greener.

The Waterbury, Vt., coffee maker is adding 530 solar panels to the roof of its distribution center. When complete it will be the largest solar installation in Vermont, the company said.

The 100 kilowatt system will only provide a small percentage of the power the coffee company needs, but the real value of the system is demonstrating that solar can work for business in the Northeast, the company said.

“Renewable energy must be a part of our overall energy strategy,” Paul Comey, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., said in a statement.  “We
want to show our state and federal governments that solar energy works, and that we need
a policy that provides a broad-reaching structure for renewable energy.”