Richard Fuller (environmentalist)

Richard Fuller (environmentalist, founder Blacksmith Institute)(born 1960) is an Australian-born engineer, entrepreneur and environmentalist best known for his work in global pollution remediation. He is founder and president of the nonprofit Blacksmith Institute, dedicated to solving pollution problems in low and middle-income countries, where human health is at risk. He is also the founder and president of Great Forest, Inc., a leading sustainability consultancy in the U.S.

In 2010, Fuller was profiled in Time magazine’s Power of One column on the impact he has made in fighting life-threatening pollution worldwide. The article pointed to Fuller’s success in raising awareness about the issue of toxic pollution in low and middle- income countries - one of the most underreported and underfunded global problems.^[1]

“There’s a finite number of polluted sites out there, and you can fix them for relatively little.”^[2]

In 2011, he accepted the UN-backed Green Star Award for Blacksmith’s work in environmental emergencies, particularly for work in the Nigeria lead poisoning crisis.

Fuller created a number of initiatives that established a model for global pollution cleanup. They include the Blacksmith Index, developed with John Hopkins and used around the world to rate levels of health risk from pollution; and the Blacksmith database, the only resource of its kind, which currently documents nearly 3000 of the world's worst polluted places.

Fuller is also responsible for the creation and launch of the annual World's Worst Polluted Places Reports and the publication of the Blacksmith Journal of Health and Pollution, which promotes and brings together academic research on the health effects of life-threatening toxic pollution. He also contributes to The Pollution Blog.

In 2008, Fuller began efforts to create the global Health and Pollution Fund, a superfund-inspired initiative to finance the cleanup and elimination of legacy pollution in the low and middle-income countries.

After a stint in IBM, Fuller headed to the rainforests of Brazil to work on global environmental issues with the United Nations Environmental Programme. He then brought his experience to New York, establishing Great Forest Inc. to work on greening commercial buildings and corporations in the pioneering days of corporate social responsibility. Realizing that enhancing sustainability practices to corporations alone would not have enough impact on global environmental issues, Fuller started Blacksmith Institute to tackle the problem on a larger scale.^[3]

Blacksmith Institute is an international not-for-profit organization dedicated to solving life-threatening pollution issues in the developing world. Based in New York, Blacksmith works cooperatively around the world in partnerships that include governments, the international community, NGOs and local agencies, to design and implement innovative, low-cost solutions to fight pollution in some of the world’s worst polluted places, where children are most at risk. Since 1999, Blacksmith has completed over 50 projects; Blacksmith is currently engaged in over 30 projects in 15 countries.