In her element: actress and eco-warrior Nadine Lustre on how she plans to save the planet

Animal agriculture also contributes to nitrous oxide emissions, which, as explained in the documentary Cowspiracy, has a global warming impact 296 times greater than carbon dioxide—and uses far more water than is needed to produce plant-based food: research shows that it takes 9,084 litres of water to produce one pound of beef but only 95 litres to make one pound of wheat. This isn’t enough to convince everyone, Lustre says. “There is a big tendency to ridicule this lifestyle, to spread false ideas like ‘soy is bad’, ‘a plant-based diet is expensive’, ‘it’s for the rich’, ‘it’s difficult to change’, ‘it is not tasty’, ‘you will have [nutritional] deficiencies’, and so on. But it [plant-based foods] is proven to be 30 per cent cheaper on an average, and there is a ‘plant-based’ substitute to pretty much everything now,” adding, “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Lustre is also passionate about a far less trendy issue: proper waste management. A keen hiker and a fan of the beach, she frequently witnesses how irresponsibly people dispose of rubbish. “It annoys me to see pieces of plastic on the ground. Every time my group and I hike up the mountains, we carry a big bag full of trash on the way down,” she says. “On one of our hikes [in January 2018], I felt at one with the universe and realised that how I treat the planet is the same as how I was treating myself,” she says. “That’s when everything clicked: I have to do something about this just because it reflects who I am as a person.”

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She started contributing to the cause in earnest, partnering with the European skincare brand Bioten to help For The Future and MAD Travel raise funds for 88k Trees, a reforestation project in the ancestral lands of the Yangil Tribe. She also supports the Siargao-based non-profit organisation SEA Movement by adopting a marine protected area, among others. Helping protect the environment and address climate change, Lustre says, “is as simple as bringing your utensils, so you don’t have to use single-use plastic, or bringing your tumbler when you go for coffee or eco-bag when you shop,” reiterating the effects of plastic consumption and improper waste disposal, which combine to account for the Philippines being considered the world’s third-largest contributor to plastic waste, creating an estimated 750,000 metric tonnes of ocean plastic every year, according to a study by the World Bank.

Lustre dedicates her efforts to her late younger brother, who passed away in October 2017. “I blamed myself so much for his passing … for not being there. I felt that I was not a good sister,” she says. On the same hike that she realised how important it was that she actively protect the environment, she also felt her brother somehow reconnect with her. “That was the start of my healing from the loss,” she says. “I also realised that he is now in a place where all the pain and suffering that he went through when he was alive is gone.” This epiphany also prompted her to advocate for mental wellness: today, she is part of MindYou, a B2C platform that provides workplaces with affordable mental health support. 

With so much on her plate, it would be natural to assume the actress and eco-warrior had reached her peak. However, Lustre sees it as just the beginning. When asked what else she’d like to do, her immediate response is animal rights activism. “I’d like to be a part of a group that protects the welfare and rights of animals—all kinds of animals, not just dogs and cats. I’ve seen how animals are mistreated or killed in real life and on TV and documentaries, and it’s terrible,” she says, tearing up.

These days, Lustre spends most of the year in Siargao, an island that was badly affected by Super Typhoon Odette in 2021. Having long dreamt of living near the ocean, she felt this decision gave her breathing space away from the suffocating demands of city living, and moved there not long ago. “There’s much inspiration in Siargao. You walk a couple of metres, and you’re at the beach. I get creative when I’m around nature. I guess it’s the energy, too,” she says. 

Not long after she moved, Odette hit—a devastating storm that knocked down more than a million houses in the area. “It looked like a bomb was dropped in the middle of the island, and everything was wrecked. It was like the Apocalypse,” Lustre recalls of what she saw upon returning to the island from Manila a few days after the storm. Taking a red-eye flight from Cagayan de Oro, travelling by land for eight hours, and a six-hour gruelling boat ride, Lustre arrived in Siargao and helped the typhoon survivors in ways she could—from distributing food packs and clean water to helping install solar panels. Her post-disaster experience on the island reinforced her intentions to advocate for climate change. 

While Lustre admits she is still growing, and learning something new every day about the issues she advocated for, her passion for them is as solid as a rock, and she is eager that other, younger Filipinos come to the realisation for action earlier than she did. “[I encourage everyone to] teach children environmentalism while they are young. Start them early. We are in this together. If the planet gets destroyed, where will we all go?” 

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