SEAL Awards are an environmental advocacy organization that uses annual awards for businesses and journalists to support environmental initiatives and to fund grants in the field of policy research. The name is an acronym for sustainability, environmental achievement, and leadership. The Awards were created in 2017 by businessman Matt Harney.
Award categories
Business Sustainability Awards These awards honor corporate sustainability initiatives, sustainable products, and environmentally responsible innovation. Application fees for this award fund social impact campaigns and research grants.
Environmental Journalism Awards Twelve journalists each year receive recognition for environmental reporting, particularly investigative journalism. Past award winners include writers for traditional news media such as The Guardian and more recent, web-based platforms like Grist and Mongabay.
+ Award Winners Year of award Journalist Publication 2017 The Guardian 2017 The New Yorker 2017 Inside Climate News 2017 Mother Jones 2017 The Atlantic 2017 The Guardian 2017 The Washington Post 2017 Fast Company 2017 The New York Times 2017 Vox 2018 The Guardian 2018 CalMatters 2018 Ars Technica 2018 Grist 2018 HuffPost 2018 National Geographic, Vice 2018 The Washington Post 2018 Bloomberg Environment 2018 The New York Times 2018 Vox 2018 The New York Times 2018 The Guardian 2019 HEATED 2019 The New York Times 2019 Earther/Gizmodo 2019 The Guardian 2019 Vox 2019 National Geographic 2019 The Atlantic 2019 Fast Company 2019 Vox 2019 The New York Times 2019 The Guardian 2019 Time 2020 NPR 2020 Mongabay 2020 The Washington Post 2020 The New York Times 2020 The Guardian 2020 Hot Take 2020 Earther 2020 HuffPost 2020 Grist 2020 Volts (newsletter) 2020 MIT Technology Review 2020 Grist 2021 Al Jazeera English, The Guardian 2021 Vox, Mother Jones, Grist 2021 The Atlantic 2021 The Boston Globe, Earther 2021 Time 2021 Grist 2021 CNN 2021 Volts (newsletter) 2021 The New York Times 2021 Forbes, The Financial Times 2021 ProPublica 2021 Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed News 2022 The Narwhal 2022 Mongabay 2022 Floodlight 2022 Mongabay 2022 Africa Climate News 2022 Yale Climate Connections 2022 ProPublica 2022 Grist 2022 The Guardian, National Geographic 2022 Earther/Gizmodo 2022 The Hill 2022 Grist, Sierra Magazine 2023 Los Angeles Times 2023 Southeast Asia Globe 2023 The Washington Post 2023 The Hill 2023 The Third Pole (Dialogue Earth) 2023 Mongabay 2023 freelance 2023 Heatmap News 2023 Mongabay 2023 freelancer 2023 The Boston Globe 2023 Grist 2024 Inside Climate News 2024 Reuters, Dialogue Earth 2024 Carbon Brief 2024 Politico 2024 Grist 2024 Capital B News 2024 DeSmog, The Guardian 2024 Mongabay, Hakai Magazine 2024 Grist 2024 The Guardian 2024 The Narwhal 2024 The Guardian
Impact Campaigns SEAL Awards have advocated for the creation of a credit card whose interchange fees would pay into climate change programs rather than a traditional credit rewards program, targeted cup waste in the Starbucks café chain and Yelp reviews of restaurants using plastic straws, and endorsed Jay Inslee for the 2020 United States presidential campaign. The environmental rewards credit card was presented as an open-source concept in a detailed business case launch memo.
Environmental Research Grants The research award is a monetary grant for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers at the beginning of their careers in environmental policy.
References