background

The Things We Cannot See: A celebration of Earth Month

landscape.png
Earth Month arrived quietly that morning, like a whisper against the window.
 
A mother stood in her kitchen, sunlight stretching across the counter where her child’s breakfast waited—fruit in a plastic bowl, cereal in a brightly colored box, milk poured from a container so ordinary it asked no questions of anyone. The world, at first glance, seemed safe. Familiar. Kind.
 
But there are stories that live beneath the surface of things.
Stories that do not announce themselves.
Stories that settle into our lives the way dust settles on a shelf—unseen, until the light hits just right.
 
This is one of those stories.

Years ago, when we spoke of fossil fuels, we spoke of smoke stacks and tailpipes, of distant refineries and faraway spills. We spoke of climate, of carbon, of the sky above us.

We did not speak of the body.

We did not speak of the quiet journey fossil fuels make once they are transformed into petrochemicals—reshaped into the very objects we hold, wear, eat from, and trust.

Over 70,000 products now carry the fingerprint of fossil fuels into our daily lives. Not as fuel, but as form. As plastic. As preservatives. As invisible compounds resting in lotions, fabrics, packaging, and toys.

And so, the story changed—without telling us it had.

Because what we thought lived outside of us…
had already begun to live within us.

In laboratories and lecture halls, voices began to rise.

Dr. Tracey Woodruff, a scientist with the steady urgency of truth, spoke of chemicals that disrupt the body’s delicate symphony—contributing to cancer, infertility, and cardiovascular disease. Other researchers, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, traced the arc of petrochemical exposure to chronic illnesses, from neurodevelopmental disorders to respiratory disease.

And then came the most haunting realization of all:

This exposure does not begin in adulthood.
It begins in the womb.

From the very first breath not yet taken, the human body is already in conversation with the hazardous chemical world we have built.

And still, the mother in her kitchen does not see it.

How could she?

The danger does not announce itself with smoke.
It does not carry a warning label loud enough to stir the soul.
It arrives quietly—through touch, through taste, through the ordinary rituals of living.

We now know that the average person may ingest the equivalent of a credit card’s worth of plastic every week. Imagine that—not as data, but as reality. A card, small and unassuming, slowly dissolving into the story of a human life.

This is not pollution as we once understood it.

This is intimacy.
This is accumulation.
This is a crisis that has learned how to hide.

But every hidden story, when told, begins to lose its power.

Clean Production Action did not begin with all the answers. It began with a question—simple, almost disarming:

What if we could measure what has long been ignored?

And from that question rose the Chemical Footprint Project—a way to bring light into shadow, to give shape to what had been invisible.

Through this work, companies are asked to do something both radical and necessary: to look.

To measure the chemicals of high concern in their products.
To name them.
To count them.
To take responsibility for them.

Because there is a quiet truth that governs both science and life:

We cannot change what we refuse to see.

And something remarkable happened when companies began to see.

They began to act.

More than 130 million pounds of hazardous chemicals have already been removed from products—not by accident, but by intention. By courage. By the simple, transformative act of awareness.

And behind those numbers are stories too—workers safer in their environments, families less exposed in their homes, children growing up in a world just a little less burdened by what they cannot see.

But no single hand can lift a burden this great.

So, partnerships formed—like rivers joining toward a common sea.

Businesses, once silent, began to lead.
Investors, once distant, began to demand transparency.
Governments, once reactive, began to shape forward-thinking policy.
And communities, long unheard, began to claim their rightful place in the conversation.

Together, they are rewriting what accountability looks like in a world shaped by chemistry.

And now, a new chapter unfolds.

It is called the Collaboratory for a Regenerative Economy—CoRE.

If the Chemical Footprint Project is the act of seeing,
then CoRE is the act of becoming.
Becoming a world where materials are safe by design.
Where supply chains honor both people and planet.
Where the economy does not extract life—but regenerates it.

CoRE is not content with reducing harm.

It dares to ask:
What would it mean to create good?

The mother in the kitchen does not know these names—petrochemicals, endocrine disruptors, chemical footprints.

But she knows love.
She knows protection.
She knows that the world her child inherits must be better than the one she was given.

And that is where this story finds its power.

Because this is not only a story about chemicals.
It is a story about choice.
 
A choice to continue as we have—comfortable in what we do not see.
Or a choice to awaken—to measure, to act, to transform.

This Earth Month, Clean Production Action invites you into that choice.

With new funding secured for CoRE, there is a moment before us—fragile and full of possibility.

A matching gift opportunity stands ready.
Every dollar given becomes two.
Every act of generosity becomes a doubling of hope.

Your support will not disappear into abstraction.

It will move through real systems, real companies, real communities—reducing harm, creating alternatives, building a future where the unseen no longer controls the story.

This is not a distant cause.

It is as close as your breath.
As intimate as your skin.
As urgent as the life we are all living.
And so, we end where we began—
with the quiet, powerful truth of things unseen. Happy EARTH DAY to you all and please DONATE to Clean Production Action so we can keep doing the good work.

 

Peace,

DK

Derreck Kayongo

Derreckism: “For it is not the storm we witness that shapes our destiny,
but the silent winds we learn to name.
And when we dare to see what was hidden,
we do more than protect life—
we become its faithful guardians.”

Share: