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Sitting by the River

Nyack’s Rich Fuller: Global Toxic Avenger

One Nyack resident has dedicated his life to cleaning up the environment. Read his inspiring story.

Environmental crusader Rich Fuller and his dog in Nyack. Scroll to the bottom of this story to listen to the full interview with Rich and author Dianne Snyder. (Photo by Dianne Snyder)

It’s 2025, and most of us are aware that Earth, with its boundless beauty and myriad resources, has been exploited and polluted. As a result, many communities around the world are suffering greatly from the toxic mess left behind.

Enter Rich Fuller.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Rich is a current Nyack resident who has made it his life’s mission to create a safer and less polluted world. 

Shortly after college, Rich worked as a salesman for IBM, but realized that the goal of becoming a director at a large, public corporation was not for him. Instead, he wanted to make a difference in the world and resigned from the company. Along with his prevailing life goals of skiing in the western U.S. and learning another language, he was drawn to the Amazon rainforest. 

In 1988, Chico Mendes, a Brazilian environmentalist, was assassinated for advocating against Brazilian rainforest deforestation, which was causing increased carbon emissions and weakened forests. Rich learned that making effective use of state land could be a solution. Introduced to Noel Brown, head of the UNEP USA at the time (the United Nations Environment Program responsible for working on global environmental issues), he started working with them.

Even paying his own way at times, Rich traveled to the Amazon for about a year, making his way along major tributaries and meeting with locals. He worked with the federal government to set up reserves, and thus turn hundreds of thousands of acres of land into designated parks that are safer from deforestation. Eventually, RIch experienced some major push back, including assassination attempts, but his efforts paid off because there are now more areas under protection in Brazil.

After spending about a year in Brazil, Rich, still compelled to create a positive impact on our planet, headed back to New York. He soon began Great Forest, which establishes recycling programs across the U.S. for large companies in office buildings. This company did well, but Rich still felt he needed to do something more contributive.

He began conversations with people about what was missing within the sphere of the environment. Meeting with groups of like-minded people, they looked at problems with biodiversity, oceans, climate change and toxins. Then they divided the countries into richer and poorer nations and eventually concluded that although some environmental issues had begun to be addressed, pollution was not being tackled in the poorer countries.

Rich Fuller’s book, “The Brown Agenda”.

Rich then founded the non-profit Pure Earth, which now has more than 100 staff in offices around the world. Their key focus is lead poisoning, which globally causes three to five million deaths a year. That’s three times worse than HIV and seven to ten times worse than malaria. Initially, Rich visited Tanzania, Zambia, Cambodia and Thailand to understand global pollution issues and determine where the gaps were. The non-profit now works in over a dozen countries, including India, Bangladesh and Mexico. 

 “We wrote the Cambodia clean air and water act for them,”  Rich notes, “as well as some smaller projects. But at some point we found places that were acutely toxic…so toxic that life expectancy would be 30-40 years.”

Now supported by The World Bank, the USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), and The European Commission, an inventory of toxic sites began. Pure Earth began doing clean-ups and educating individuals about particularly harmful problems. Most people living around these sites were unaware of how unsafe the environment was for their children and their cardiovascular health. The solutions were really cost effective. In some cases, Pure Earth worked out that for just $100 spent, one person’s life could be saved.

After a while, it became obvious that most of the toxic issues centered around lead (60% of their workload) and Rich stresses that “Even in our country, although cookware is now regulated, lead sneaks into things like eyeliner and other make-up. If something is made in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, they’re probably made mostly of lead sulfate and very toxic.”

Recently, Rich stepped down as CEO at Pure Earth to head up the company’s research and strategy agenda. “I’m getting to the age where it’s appropriate to turn things over to the next generation,” he admits, “and so far it’s been a delight. I’m making sure we do the most good with the money our donors provide.”

And although Rich has done much for numerous worthwhile causes, he claims, “By far, the best thing I have accomplished is having three terrific kids.” 

So what does the future hold for RIch?

He would like to write another book to provide tips for people who feel they want to do something contributive, even on a small scale. Rich is a wonderful example of yet another Nyack resident who is making a difference in the world at large. 

Listen to the full in-depth interview with environmentalist Rich Fuller and author Dianne Snyder.

Author’s note: For more about Rich’s work, you can read his book, The Brown Agenda. For further information on his organization Pure Earth, please visit pureearth.org.


Nyack People & Places, a weekly series that features photos and profiles of citizens and scenes near Nyack, NY, is sponsored by Ellis Sotheby’s International Realty.


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