When Greenmaker Supply won one of the 2006 Innovate Illinois prizes awarded to the state’s most innovative small businesses, the green home-improvement retail store was not even a year old yet.

The store was a perfect fit for Chicago, a city where the mayor’s very public commitment to green principles includes a 2004 executive order that Chicago’s new public buildings must be built with eco-friendly designs and materials. Greenmaker Supply helps homeowners make that commitment, too.

“Green building is something I’ve always been interested in,” says co-founder Ori Sivan, who has a master’s degree in environmental engineering. “Business is the biggest engine for innovation, and while I could have gone into engineering or academics, I thought the thing to do was start a green business.”

Humans have harvested honey, our oldest sweetener, for thousands of years. As recently as 100 years ago, honey was still typically sold as a raw and unheated product, which tended to crystallize within a month of its harvest. Although gentle warming easily returns crystallized honey to a liquid state, modern honey production methods strive to keep most super-market honey in its liquid form for as long as one year by introducing heating and filtration steps that also strip most of the nutritional value from the finished product. Honey Garden Apiaries, a direct-to-consumer producer of raw honey in Hinesburg, Vermont, still harvests its products the old-fashioned way. Its final product retains traces of pollen, beeswax and “propolis” (a resinous substance made from leaves and tree bark) within the honey, all of which add healthful minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and amino acids.

How do you teach the next generation about the importance of peace and sustainability? According to Journey’s End Farm Camp in Newfoundland, PA, a few summer weeks of communal living, farm chores, and fun and games can encourage children to adopt the qualities necessary for advancing a peaceful and ecologically healthy world.“Camp is a place to have fun, and it’s also a place for working, learning, and growing,” explains co-director Chris Martin.

When Tim and Connie Long started North Star Toys, a wooden toy company based in the mountains in northeast New Mexico in 1979, it was a natural fit. Tim loved working with wood since his childhood days building soapbox cars, and Connie’s experience as a preschool teacher had shown her the importance of play in childhood development. The two started making wooden toys for friends and family as a hobby, and were happily surprised when they sold their entire inventory at a local crafts fair. The couple started North Star Toys shortly thereafter.

Jeff Lebesch was already a homebrewer of beer when he set off on a bike trip across Europe in 1986. Belgium’s famous beers inspired Jeff to duplicate their flavors once he returned home. He produced an amber ale and a brown dubbel (a darker “double ale”) named, respectively, Fat Tire and Abbey in honor of his trip, and won rave reviews from friends and relatives for their flavors.

“Investors go gaga over green,” reported National Public Radio in July 2007. “Investors are pouring money into alternative energy and so-called clean-tech firms, touted as one of the biggest economic opportunities of the century.”

But to David Schoenwald, who manages the New Alternatives Fund, a socially responsible mutual fund, the idea that “clean tech” is a promising investment isn’t news. He’s been focused on the promise of renewable energy for more than two decades. When he founded New Alternatives with his father Maurice in 1982, the elder Schoenwald wanted to invest in technologies like solar panels, which were promising alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels.