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Meet the Ecopreneur:

Q: How did the idea for SeaTrees come about? A: Before launching SeaTrees, I worked for a nonprofit organization focused on carbon offsetting. I was excited to be learning and working on traditional forest conservation projects at the time, but the power of the ocean kept calling me back to my roots. So I left to work on other entrepreneurial opportunities, and that’s how Kevin and I met.

While raising awareness about ocean health was key for Sustainable Surf, Stewart and Whilden wanted to create a more direct and measurable way for people to make an impact. So they developed SeaTrees. Through the program, launched in 2018, the co-founders are enabling millions of individuals to make small contributions that fund projects to restore and protect coastal ecosystems like mangrove forests and coral reefs around the world, while also helping brands directly fund its blue carbon projects. Through its innovative online platform, SeaTrees is making it easier than ever for people to support the most effective way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

As surfers, Kevin and I were both fascinated by the intersection of solving climate change and the superpower of the ocean to be the carbon “bank” for the whole world. Most (approx. 90%) of the carbon in the planet’s carbon cycle is actually stored in the ocean, so we knew the regenerating the ocean’s various ecosystems had the ability to help reverse climate change—if we could build a vehicle to harness the “potential” power of people to get involved. We’d been looking for ways to do it, other people to do it with, companies or brands that understood the power of the ocean, but we realized no one else was going to do what we’re talking about. Finally, I just said, “Okay, if not us, who? If not now, when? Let’s give it a shot.”

Q: SeaTrees is not a typical NPO. What informed your unique business model? A: So thinking back to: What’s the best way for us to set this up? Do I build a normal nonprofit that requires me to spend most of my time trying to raise philanthropic donations, and mostly talk about the issue we want to fix? No. We weren’t going to just talk about the issue of climate change. We were going to create a direct pathway for action that people could take to start getting involved in the solutions to reverse climate change. The idea was to build the whole website on an e-commerce platform and make everything that we do a product that someone can actually support—in the same way that you get a ride share. If we can make it that easy, or even easier than that to plant a tree in the sea, then we’re golden. We also run brand partnerships through the platform as well, so we have real-time data. For example, we know we have to plant 100,000 trees this quarter. Because of technology and the use of Salesforce, we have a dashboard that shows how many trees are left under contract in this particular project. It’s great that there are tools available that you can build into your operations so that you’re not waiting until the end of the year to say, “Hey, what did we do?”

Q: SeaTrees is not a typical NPO. What informed your unique business model?

Q: You mentioned Salesforce—can you talk about your experience with their Ocean Hack event? A: We had announced the creation of the SeaTrees project at the 2018 Global Wave Conference in Santa Cruz, Calif., and we were working on exactly how we were going to bring it to market. I thought, “Let’s publicly workshop what the SeaTrees platform should look like and how it should work at the ocean hack event.” We have some of the brightest minds on the West Coast here, why would we not do that, right? It was really this great moment of having this immensely cool, core idea and then trying to really figure out how to make it actionable for business partners.

Q: When you launched SeaTrees, you wanted to get brands and individuals involved. How did that differentiate your organization from others in the ocean activism space? A: We’re in the business of providing restored and protected ecosystems. Once it clicked that we could turn this into a “product,” we thought, “What’s the best way to “sell” and scale something in the world right now if you don’t have a huge pile of money to get started?” Online retail.

Who was doing online retail well? As it turns out, a lot of surfers, including the founders of 4Ocean. These guys are a multimillion-dollar company now, and it was founded on the simple idea of having a cool product that harnesses the power of surfing and the ocean to clean up the world’s beaches and waterways of plastic pollution. So we looked at what they were doing— effective storytelling, use of technology, dialing into digital natives, who are used to buying everything on their phone. The immediacy of it and also using the power of social networks to actually tell that story in a direct, super compelling way.

Q: How does SeaTrees leverage the power of business and brand partnerships to accelerate change? A: When it comes down to it, business has created these climate impacts that we’re now living with. So if business created the problem, business can solve it. But we have to connect with businesses and individuals, to help them understand their role and show them how we can work with them. You can’t build a movement just by businesses wanting to do something or governments just wanting to do something. People have to want that to happen. Because those are the cues that businesses are looking at—they are trying to provide something that they think we want.

Q: How does SeaTrees leverage the power of business and brand partnerships to accelerate change?

Q: How do you think the role of brands will evolve as we continue to fight climate change? A: Businesses that are going to survive, that are going to thrive, in the next hundred years require a totally different model. The past hundred years were about extracting, externalizing the impacts, internalizing the profits. That model is being completely flipped on its head. The impacts of doing that model at a global scale are what we’re living with right now. Capitalism absolutely needs a rewrite, and it’s happening in real-time right now. Capital markets without any moral sense or understanding that these are finite resources and that we actually live here and that everything that we do has an impact on the planet? We could very easily make those into positive impacts, where everyone wins.

Q: You’ve worked with many consumer product brands to look at the impacts of their products. How have you noticed companies shifting their approach to sustainability? A: Many nonprofit organizations run away from business and brands. We ran toward them. It is their social, corporate responsibility to be doing this. It’s not just us saying this. Customers are choosing who they’re giving their money to, and if you’re not participating in these efforts, you’re not going to be attracting or keeping customers. The businesses we work with don’t actually get a grove of mangrove trees planted, or a square foot of restored kelp forest. What they get by donating to us, is the ability for us (and all our project partners) to do that restoration and protection work on their behalf. They’re responsible for the impact that’s actually created from that. So the amount of carbon that’s sequestered, the number of jobs that it provides, the water quality that’s being improved, the biodiversity numbers that are being bumped, you know, everything great that is coming out of it, they are enabling that to actually happen.

Q: You’ve worked with many consumer product brands to look at the impacts of their products. How have you noticed companies shifting their approach to sustainability?

Q: How is SeaTrees creating sustainable solutions at scale? A: I have to figure out the best partners that we can work with across all of these different ecosystems. Whether it’s a kelp forest or an entire coastal watershed (aka a ridge-to-reef system), we see where we can plug in to provide the most value in the most effective way possible. We will come in with open ears to hear what the local community needs. We will crowdfund. We’ll bring the brand partners in. We’ll bring the individuals in that understand the importance and the coolness of this and will let them chip in. If you have 10 bucks, you can help. If you have 10,000 bucks, you can help. If you have 10 million bucks, you can help. We have a pathway for everyone to get involved as an ocean activist. That’s how you scale.

Q: What does being an Ecopreneur mean to you? A: So the state of ecopreneurship around the world is growing. It is the dominant force. It is going to be the model. If you’re going to have a business that is going to stick around for the long term, it is going to be following that model. If your model is exacting resources from the planet, creating a toxic mess that is going to end up killing the planet, you are going to be put out of business. Guaranteed.

Q: How does SeaTrees plan to continue to innovate? What do you think will be your major challenges moving forward? A: We’re already working around the world in Kenya, Indonesia, Cambodia, Mexico, Australia, and the United States. The 10-year goal for SeaTrees is really simple. It’s to be creating or supporting more than 100 new blue carbon projects all around the world, across multiple ecosystems. SeaTrees is not one thing. It’s not a mangrove tree or a kelp forest or a coral reef. It’s all of that and more. And that’s what the world needs more of, in order to reverse climate change and provide all these positive impacts that we actually need.

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Michael Stewart of SeaTrees

This unique ocean-focused restoration platform is transforming how individuals and businesses can make an impact on climate change. Michael Stewart grew up by the ocean, but it wasn’t until he got older that he learned the critical role it could play in reversing climate change. This realization, mixed with his background in sustainable business and his passion for surfing, led to the 2011 creation of Sustainable Surf, a nonprofit that he founded alongside his friend, fellow environmentalist, and surfer Kevin Whilden, to spend the cultural currency that the sport of surfing has around the world to save our ocean planet.

1M+

sea trees planted

threatened species protected

EXPLAINER: See why mangroves are critical to the fight against climate change.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Episode 1 of The Ecopreneurs in California.

Explore More

DISCOVER BLUE CARBON: Why the ocean is the carbon bank for the planet.

Today, SeaTrees’ unique business model is transforming the way individuals and companies take part in the fight against climate change and saving coastal ecosystems. As of April 2021, Stewart and his team had planted one million sea trees—and they are just getting started. To learn more about Stewart’s journey as an Ecopreneur, we sat down with him in his home state of California.

Listen to Michael Stewart on the tangible impact of coastal ecosystems.

Listen to Ryan Harris on breaking the mold with sustainable businesses.

metric tons of CO₂ sequestered

355K

Q: When you launched SeaTrees, you wanted to get brands and individuals involved. How did that differentiate your organization from others in the ocean activism space?

Eco•pre•neur: an environmentally minded entrepreneur who leads and drives climate action worldwide

Back to home

EXPLAINER: See why mangroves are critical to the fight against climate change.

DISCOVER BLUE CARBON: Why the ocean is the carbon bank for the planet.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Episode 1 of The Ecopreneurs in California.

Listen to Michael Stewart on sparking the ecopreneurship movement.