EWG's Ken Cook Voted Huffington Post's Ultimate Green Game Changer

Due in part to EWG’s heavily searched farm subsidy database, the Huffington Post nominated EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook as one of its 10 “Ultimate Green Game Changers” and put the final choice up to the web site’s many readers. For two months, readers weighed in, casting 1.7 million votes.

Today we were more than pleased to learn that Mr. Cook had won.

This isn’t the first major media honor this year for Mr. Cook. Recall that in May The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, named him one of its Top 10 Grassroots Lobbyists:

Cook has challenged the orthodoxy that biofuels are by definition good for the environment.

Here is the full EWG release on Ken Cook being named the Huffington Post “Ultimate Green Game Changer.”

Embracing New Media Tools to Protect Public Health and the Environment Earns EWG Top Web Honor

 

Co-Founder and President Ken Cook Voted Huffington Post ’09 “Ultimate Green Game Changer”

Washington, D.C. — The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is proud to announce that president and co-founder Ken Cook has been voted The Huffington Post’s Ultimate Green Game Changer of 2009 for harnessing new media to reshape federal environmental policy and public awareness.

In September, the consistently top-rated blog Huffington Post named Cook as one of its top ten “Ultimate Green Game Changers.” Over the past two months, votes cast by the blog’s readers carried him to the top of that list, with an average rating of 8.3 out of ten.

“On behalf of the Environmental Working Group’s staff and supporters, I offer sincere thanks to Arianna Huffington, the editors and staff at the Huffington Post,” said Cook.

“To win based in part on our ability to harness new media and communications tools is invigorating and renews our commitment to fighting effectively for public health and the environment,” said Cook.

“It’s an honor to be listed alongside these nine extremely accomplished, innovative colleagues in the environmental movement,” Cook added.

Other Green Game Changer nominees included Isabella Rosellini, Kitchen Gardens International’s Roger Doiron, the Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, Treehugger’s Graham Hill, Climate Counts’ Gary Hirshberg, David De Rothschild, Carrot Mob’s Brent Schulkin and Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine’s Gavin Starks.

Since founding EWG in 1993, Cook has been leading an information-driven campaign to focus attention on facts and data that are commonly overlooked or unpublished. In nominating him, Huffington Post’s editors singled out EWG’s data-driven work on a comprehensive cell phone radiation database, mercury contamination in tuna, the dangers of BPA and EWG’s heavily searched farm subsidy database.

The farm subsidy database is a powerful tool for lawmakers and media that reveals the billions of taxpayer dollars funneled to the largest and most profitable agri-business operations. The Huffington Post pointed out that the New York Times refers to the database as a “must-read for farmers.”

More recently, EWG has put together next-generation online tools such as a widget for finding the radiation output of popular cell phone models and a tuna calculator that allows consumers to monitor their mercury intake. These are all part of the more than one million pages of robust web content EWG maintains with a modest staff of 37 employees.

With the rollout of each new consumer guide or study, EWG’s online list of supporters grows, currently in the hundreds of thousands. Those on the list receive regular updates about EWG’s work and are active participants when asked step up and help out, whether calling and emailing policymakers or flooding industry with phone calls demanding change.

The Huffington Post called Cook the “Clark Kent of environmental activists” and highlighted one of his most widely publicized quotes: “I often tell people that at EWG we are swayed by facts, not emotion. And the facts really piss us off.”

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