I met Richard Seireeni in the basement of the Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle. He'd just taken us on a PowerPoint trip through The Gort Cloud (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008) - his book describing the ad hoc communications web that constitutes much of green marketing.

 I felt inspired and relieved after hearing from him and, subsequently, reading the book. Inspired because the book outlines 20 sustainable companies that have become remarkable successes -- I can envision myself among them someday! As a group, these entrepreneurs broke many rules, failed, tried again and succeeded.

I felt relieved because the random, mitochondrial nature of the Gort cloud mirrored my own chaotic marketing plan. And maybe that's OK. And also because he was accompanied at the book reading by his 8-year-old son, who helped coach him through some of the presentation. I see he also is balancing family and a life's work.

I highly recommend this book for you, the ecobly entrepreneur, to help you create a revolution by running your sustainable business (read my previous blog about some GreenFest revolutionaries).

The companies in Seireeni's book have paved the way for green business in America, but by making "green" profitable, they've also ushered in the greenwashers and hucksters.

In the chapter about Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Seireeni quotes Michael Dupee, a GMCR executive:

"Dupee believes that too many companies today are jumping onto the sustainability bandwagon with skin-deep credentials. 'It's people using codewords and buzzwords to try to communicate some level of virtue that may or may not be true. It doesn't do justice to the kinds of things that we're all working on here."

"Business is the most potentially powerful agent for change in the world," he continues. "It used to be community, then it was religion, and now it's business. That's what we need to use as the tool."

The Gort Cloud definitely left me wanting more. Even though the author explicitly stated at the beginning of the book "this is not a how-to guide," I wanted it to be a how-to guide! I'll check into some of his recommendations for further reading.

The companies listed in the ecobly directory come from every corner of the marketplace - countertops, hats, worm poop - but they have a few things in common. They are really, really green. They are typically smaller companies (many are just one or two folks on the farm or working out of the basement). And, whether they know it or not, they're frequent fliers through the Gort Cloud.