Purpose Prize

Marc Freedman Portrait

The Latest from CoGenerate

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

New Survey Reveals Benefits of Older-Younger Tutoring Teams

For the past year, Ampact, with support from CoGenerate’s Generations Serving Together program, placed cogenerational pairs of AmeriCorps members in elementary schools. The older and younger adults worked side by side to improve students’ reading and math skills. A...

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

The Billionaire Who Gave Away His Fortune Took a Big Chance on Us

We at CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) are mourning the loss of Chuck Feeney this week. Without Chuck's vision and generosity we likely would not exist as an organization. Twenty-five years ago Atlantic Philanthropies took a chance on our start-up, playing a...

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Ted Smith

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006

Improving the environmental health and safety practices of the global electronics industry

Silicon Valley may be ground zero for innovation, but it was also a potential environmental disaster area in 1982 when Ted Smith founded the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in response to the public health threat created by hazardous groundwater contamination from high-tech manufacturing facilities in San Jose. After organizing the community to clean up the groundwater contamination, the Coalition pressured computer and electronics manufacturers to make more environmentally friendly choices and use cleaner production methods. Hewlett Packard and Dell Computers led the industry in actively promoting the Coalition’s Computer TakeBack Campaign, which Smith started in 1997 to get computer companies to recycle obsolete computers appropriately. Several states including California, Washington, Maine, and Massachusetts have now passed e-waste legislation mandating safer disposal and recycling. Today, Smith, 61, is the coordinator for the International Campaign for Responsible Technology (ICRT) and is implementing a long-term strategy to promote sustainability within the global high-tech industry.