SEAL Awards Marks Ten Years of Honoring Business Sustainability and Climate Reporting

This month marks the tenth anniversary of SEAL Awards, an organization dedicated to recognizing corporate sustainability leadership, funding early-career environmental research, and honoring the journalists whose reporting has shaped public understanding of the climate crisis. From its initial idea of corporate sustainability recognition in September 2016, the organization has grown from a single set of business awards into a three-pillar effort spanning recognition, research, and direct action.

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten years ago, SEAL Awards Founder Matt Harney set out to build an organization that could champion positive corporate environmental practices. A decade later, that founding idea has expanded into three connected pillars: the Business Sustainability Awards, the Environmental Journalism Awards, and the Environmental Research Grants, alongside a series of independent environmental impact campaigns.

The SEAL Business Sustainability Awards have recognized global leaders including Cisco, Disneyland, General Electric, General Motors, Honeywell, IBM, Microsoft, Mastercard, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, Samsung, Southwest Airlines, and Whirlpool among the world's most sustainable. Past award winners like AiDash, Beewise, Enervee, FloWater, PATH (Pathwater), and Stasher reflect SEAL Business Sustainability Awards' inclusion of start-ups and emerging sustainability leaders. SEAL's ESG recognition efforts were furthered by its analytical process - merging CDP A-List data with CSA / S&P Global ESG Scores - for its SEAL Organizational Impact Award, representing the top 50 most sustainable companies in the world. Application fees from the business awards fund the organization's research grants, environmental journalism awards and impact campaigns, tying corporate recognition directly to the organization's broader mission.

The Environmental Journalism Awards have honored journalists at outlets ranging from established newsrooms - The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bloomberg, NPR, and ProPublica - to emerging, climate-focused publications including Mongabay, Grist, Earther, and The Narwhal. Each year, the program recognizes twelve journalists for reporting that connects environmental systems to the political and economic forces shaping them and the communities living through them.

The Environmental Research Grants fund graduate students and postdoctoral researchers early in their environmental policy careers, with past recipients based at institutions including Harvard, MIT, UCLA, Arizona State University, Princeton, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Marine Conservation Institute, and Duke.

Beyond granting recognition to corporate sustainability and environmental journalism, SEAL Awards has taken on its own impact campaigns, including developing the concept for an Eco Rewards credit card, launching the "UpTheCup" public call for Starbucks to reduce cup waste that achieved over 70,000 petition signatures on Change.org, and a push for Yelp to highlight sustainable restaurant listings – efforts that use the organization's network to drive change directly rather than solely through recognition. Through these campaigns, over 100 interns gained training by directly owning impact campaign deliverables.

"Ten years ago, sustainability was often a small, ignored cost center within companies," said Matt Harney, Founder of SEAL Awards. "Today, companies are being asked to show their work, and increasingly, they can. In the past decade, we've seen real progress in making sustainability a core pillar instead of an afterthought. The challenge we face in the coming decade is to shift from sustainability as an aspiration to a baseline, with regenerative business practices as the new goalpost."

"It has been an honor to support SEAL Awards and serve its mission from the beginning," said Safa Bee Wesley, Impact Lead. "I'm proud of the work we've accomplished over the past ten years, and especially proud of our impact internship program. Our impact campaigns set out to change the way business is done — but the biggest impact we created may have been through the experience our interns gained from planning and implementing our campaigns, and the skills they carried into their own careers in sustainability."

SEAL Awards continues to expand its search for honorees across varied industries, journalism formats, and global locations, reflecting the scale of the environmental challenges it was founded to address.

ABOUT SEAL AWARDS
SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Awards is an environmental advocacy organization that honors leadership through its corporate sustainability awards and environmental journalism awards, while funding academic research and pursuing its own environmental impact campaigns.

The SEAL Awards' core pillars are:

• Business Sustainability Awards, honoring the most sustainable companies in the world
• Environmental Journalism Awards, recognizing journalists across established and emerging outlets
• Environmental Research Grants, funding early-career researchers at institutions including Harvard, MIT, and Duke
• Impact Campaigns, applying the organization's network directly toward environmental accountability

Company Website
https://sealawards.com/

SOURCE SEAL Awards