While Stowe Mountain Lodge’s composting program may have started just a few months ago, Stowe Mountain Resort’s commitment to the environment has been in place for many years. The development and adoption of the SMR 2000 Community Master Plan was based on the objective to both reinvigorate and establish a sustainable future for the resort.

It would be easy to think of Williston-based Vermont Organics Reclamation as an agricultural business, since its first phase will be to improve the processing of manure. And manure will always be a major resource for their recycling of unused plant nutrients.

For those familiar with the downtown Rutland business district, one painful memory may be empty storefronts at opposite corners of Merchants Row’s intersection with Business Route 4.

For Brandonites, it may be the sight of the parking lots at the former Vermont Tubbs and Nexus factories, both emptied within weeks. For residents of many Rutland County communities, it may be the New Year starting without the First Night celebration.

If someone told you that they were growing a business and an extraordinary quality of life in a place that was "heaven on earth" - and doing it all with seasoned pieces of dried bread - you might think they were a little crazy. But this is Vermont, where whimsical and successful businesses are more the rule than the exception. Olivia's Croutons in New Haven is one of them.

OK. Croutons?

The renamed Rutland Southern Vermont Regional Airport is starting to live up to its billing, thanks to its regional passenger air carrier’s links with a major national airline.

Cape Air, which replaced Colgan Air, has a tie-in with JetBlue, according to new airport manager Dave Carman. Not only can people book directly with JetBlue then take a daily Cape Air flight to Boston, it also lets the rest of the country know that Southern Vermont is a destination, he said.

Karen Gross is the President of Southern Vermont College, a small, private, four-year college located in Bennington. She was appointed as the college’s 8th president in 2006. SVC offers a career launching education with a liberal arts core, and many of the college’s students enter the fields of healthcare, criminal justice, entrepreneurship and social service.

Cost containment, digitizing medical records, and the shortage of primary care physicians are major issues on the health care industry’s 2009 agenda. Health care professionals, physicians and state policy overseers say unless more primary care physicians are lured to the state, and medical records made electronic, costs cannot be contained. Business will continue to bear the brunt of higher costs should the state fail to solve these issues.