Green Celebrities: Penelope Cruz

Green Celebrities: Penelope Cruz

Penelope Cruz is a regular on the red carpet, but she’s realised that you can enjoy the trappings of being a celebrity without harming the planet. In fact, she uses her celebrity status to draw attention to causes that are very close to her heart. Here’s what make Penelope Cruz a green celebrity.

She has designed a range of sustainable jewellery

She loves wearing jewels on the red carpet, but she’s proven that you can still have a bit of luxury and be environmentally-conscious.

The actress has joined forces with Swarovski to design a collection of sustainably-sourced lab-grown gemstones. The collection includes matching sets of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings that are adorned with lab-grown diamonds, rubies and sapphires, as well as genuine topaz which is ethically sourced from a mine in Brazil.

Cruz partnered with Swarovski because the company is known for investing in sustainability, or as it prefers to call it, ‘conscious luxury’. It uses lab-grown gems in the collection because even though producing them still requires a lot of energy, there’s much less of an environmental impact than mining.

The white topaz gem is the only stone that is mined, but it’s mined sustainably, and the 18-karat gold used in the jewellery is fair trade gold from Peru.

She has starred in a PETA anti-fur campaign

Penelope Cruz is an animal lover and you’ll never find her wearing fur. She teamed up with PETA and could be found on a 70ft billboard in New York complete with an anti-fur message. Other stars that have featured in PETA ads include Eva Mendes, Charlize Theron, and Michelle Obama.

As well as appearing in the ad, Cruz has designed a clothing collection with her sister for the fur-free Spanish clothing company Mango.

She has joined forces with her husband to campaign to protect the oceans

Penelope Cruz is married to the actor Javier Bardem, and both are keen environmental activists. Bardem joined a Greenpeace research expedition back in 2018 as part of a campaign to create a vast Antarctic ocean sanctuary. The huge 1.8m square kilometre stretch of the ocean would be the largest protected area on the planet and would make the area off-limits to activities like fishing and drilling. This would help protect wildlife like penguins, seals, and whales, and tackle climate change.

Cruz herself joined with other A-listers like Robert Redford and Sir Paul McCartney to campaign with Greenpeace for the creation of a global sanctuary in the Arctic. The campaign calls for an end to offshore oil drilling and unsustainable fishing in the region amid concerns that the land and ocean floor are being exploited by governments and mining companies. The area is becoming increasingly attractive to mining companies as the melting ice and rising oil prices are making oil extraction easier and more economical.