Breaking the Cycle: Choosing Responsibility Over Profit
- Green Embassy
- Dec 8, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 30, 2025
From ballet slippers to couture seams to soil under my nails — this is how my life choices and experiences led me back to Nature. Welcome to Green Embassy — where every leaf tells a story of responsibility, personal growth and care for our ecosystem.
This first part offers the background you need to understand where I am coming from in writing this article. It traces the journey of a dreamer and creator who was, for many years, ignorant of the impact of his actions — a polluter who eventually chose to educate himself and change the narrative. This is the story of my rebirth.
I have been fortunate to have my own business, but do not for a moment think it is easy. On the contrary, running any business is hard work. Beyond the administrative, financial and HR challenges that every business inevitably faces, there is also the challenge of running it sustainably. You need more than resilience; you need the courage to face the reality of the world and still commit to doing the right thing, regardless of the cost. Many business owners compromise, cut corners, or turn a blind eye to pollution, waste and excessive resource use.
Human existence is built on extractivism, and our economic system is fixated on profit above all else.
My story begun in dance. From 11 years old to 22, life for me was about movement. Classical dance thought me discipline and shaped me into who I am today. Then I feel in love with creating costumes and after graduating, I left to follow my dream in fashion. I designed hundreds of dance costumes and it was through creating that I expressed my creativity. Naive and unsure of myself, nothing meant more than following my dreams.
Then, costumes grew mature into haute-couture and I started my fashion label in London. For ten years I had the privilege of watching many of my professional dreams unfold. But when I finally opened my eyes and began educating myself, I saw the true cost of making those dreams a reality. The narrative quickly darkened. The conflict of interest grew louder.
For years, I was torn between doing what I loved and standing up for the environment and animal welfare. Being a sustainable human felt almost impossible. Fashion is one of the most polluting industries on the planet, alongside fossil fuels, agriculture and manufacturing. I could not do it any longer. Every design carried a bitter aftertaste. Behind every beautiful garment was pain.
Would I be cancelled for saying that the pandemic was a blessing? For me, it was an answer to prayer. Humanity was forced to stop and reflect — and some of us seized the chance to examine ourselves, change old habits, improve and rise above. So when I say I turned my life upside down for the environment, I mean it. I became vegan. I adopted a plant-based lifestyle and committed to being as sustainable as possible at home, in my diet, in my health, and in my consumer choices. Yet even those changes did not sit well with me. I had taken two steps forward, but by remaining in fashion I was taking three steps back.
Although Nature has always inspired me and posed as my background in many collections, I did what I had to do: I closed my fashion label for good. Years of work and investment — gone, because my planet mattered more.
You may think there was honour or bravery in this decision — and there is some truth to that — but what I really did was accept responsibility. I was not seeking to feel good about myself. I was trying to repair, or at least counterbalance, the damage I had contributed to for years. I did not want to hide, apologise, or become a hypocrite, as so many do. I confronted my mistakes, accounted for my bad choices, and acknowledged the harm I had caused. I chose to become a repairer.
This next part of my story is greener, kinder, and more at peace with the world.
After closing my business in the UK, I returned to my hometown of Lisbon. Fashion was no longer part of me, but the dreamer and creator still lived on. I needed to reinvent myself.
At 20, I promised myself I would only do what I loved. At 30, I made a new promise: I would only do what I loved as long as it did not harm the planet. Five years ago, Green Embassy was born.
Green Embassy emerged with a simple mission: to look after Nature in the same way humans have doctors and animals have vets. A place where Nature could rest, heal and be understood. Yes, we still need to earn a living, but this time not at any cost. Green Embassy rose from the ashes — my own ashes.
Starting from scratch again. Reinventing myself again. Moving countries again. Entering an industry I barely knew again. All of it was challenging — and to be honest, it still is. I would be lying if I claimed everything is perfect. But one thing was different: I was at peace with this version of myself.
I was aligned with my beliefs and my actions. I was not compromising, cutting corners or hiding the truth to make others feel better. I was learning to become a sustainable human. Every decision from that moment had to be calculated, researched and carefully chosen to maximise sustainability while still running a legitimate business.
Making informed decisions demands time and effort. It demands mastery of your craft, so that whatever you do in your business adds value rather than takes it away. This, I believe, is humanity’s greatest disease: the insatiable desire to conquer without ever measuring the consequences. We are the only species in history that knowingly destroys its own home.
Doing the right thing is difficult in an age where powerful forces — including governments — push society toward wastefulness while obscuring the truth. Social media distorts reality, selling fantasies of a perfect world that does not exist. We have become willing puppets, not because we were forced, but because we allowed it.
I said: no more. I chose to disrupt. I chose to speak truth, even when it hurts. I chose to do what is right whenever I can, however I can. I chose to pay the price. I chose to spare a wounded planet, protect a collapsing ecosystem, and be a force for change — for anyone willing to listen.
In this third and final phase of my story — after rebirth comes maturity. Maturity means something becomes second nature. It is no longer an afterthought but the guiding principle of who you are and how you live. It is tempting to follow everyone else, to replicate their formulas. But doing right by the environment demands digging deeper, truly understanding the systems we interact with and it comes at a cost — this is, without question, the hardest part. Humanity has perfected destruction. Everything around us is designed for extraction.
And what is sustainability, if not a commitment to the Law of Return? If you take but do not give back, you are not acting sustainably. If you buy something that cannot return to the soil, you are not doing it sustainably. The word sustainability comes from the Latin verb sustinere, meaning "to hold up," "to support," or "to endure". Its origin reflects the core idea of maintaining something over time, providing support so it can continue to exist.
If you allow yourself to see the truth, you will uncover things that make you deeply uncomfortable. The world is full of professional liars telling you exactly what you want to hear but that you don't need, comforting you while concealing how dire things really are. If you know the truth and still choose destruction, then at least you are owning your truth — and in its own way, that is more respectable than hypocrisy. But choosing ignorance is worse. Unease and nausea are normal; truth does that. It unsettles. And then it propels you forward into doing the right thing — which, ultimately, is all I hope for.
Whether I am fighting for animal rights, designing gardens, planting, mixing the soil or giving workshops, I want my daily actions to be a love letter to the planet. A poem of admiration for ecosystems. A rhyme of peace. A gesture of surrender.
I close with a passage from Genesis. This verse emphasises humanity’s origin from the earth itself. The Hebrew word for man (’adam) is closely related to the word for ground (’adamah). In Genesis 1:26–28, the story of human creation is told and humans were created as Earth's stewards, granted “dominion” not as ownership but responsibility. In Genesis 2:15, Adam is placed in the garden “to work it and take care of it.”
Stewardship is not exploitation; it is caretaking. Management, is not extractionism covered by profitism; is responsability. The Earth is not our possession. We are mere guests passing through.
When you are invited to someone's house, do you destroy their home in return? So, if you believe in something, regardless of what that is, for the love of Christ - wake up and join our cause!
Written by Lucas Cruz Bueno
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