How do business objectives around health align with community environmental projects?
As we enter the third of year Bupa’s partnership with Landcare Australia, Bronwyn Portes, Director, Sustainability and Social Impact APAC, spoke to us about how the partnership supports Bupa’s Healthy Cities program, the importance of impact, and shares tips for ensuring a partnership works for everyone involved.
What motivated Bupa to partner with Landcare Australia and how does this partnership align with your broader sustainability strategy?
At Bupa, we are a purpose led company that helps people live longer, healthier, happier lives in a better world. We know that health is intricately linked with planet health. Our health is shaped by the air we breathe, the clean water we drink and the soil we grow our food in and our connection to nature. As a healthcare company, we see first-hand how climate change is resulting in increasing natural disasters, higher average temperatures, increasing air contaminants and changes to green spaces contributing to increasing health events and health risks such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and mental health.
Partnering with Landcare Australia strongly aligns with our communities and planet pillars of our strategy through the Healthy Cities program. This program focuses on prevention, healthier urban environments and regenerating nature where people live, work and connect. Landcare Australia brings trusted local expertise, strong community networks and a practical, on the ground approach that turns shared ambition into tangible action.
What outcomes or impact are you most proud of through this partnership so far?
We’re most proud of the way the partnership with Landcare Australia has helped turn investment into real outcomes for both nature and community wellbeing. Through Landcare Australia, Bupa has been able to support 69 locally led regeneration projects to plant over 200,000 native plants and trees across 2025 and 2026 which have helped restore green spaces, improve biodiversity and create healthier environments for communities.
The work Landcare Australia does through the partnership has a long-term benefit for the community as the plantings help cool cities, improve air quality, and provide green space (almost like a green prescription for health) for people to support mental and physical health. Being part of work that creates lasting benefits for people across generations and ensuring we are protecting our planet is important for us.
How has the partnership engaged Bupa employees, and what impact has this had on staff connection to purpose or wellbeing?
Sir David Attenborough said, “No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced” and the partnership with Landcare Australia provides Bupa employees with the opportunity to experience, care and feel. Through volunteering and participation in local regeneration activities, employees see firsthand how restoring nature supports health, wellbeing and community connection.
This has had a powerful impact on driving employee engagement as our employees are living the Bupa purpose to help people live longer, healthier lives, and making a better world. Employees consistently tell us that being involved in nature-based projects helps them reconnect with their own wellbeing, strengthens their sense of purpose at work, and builds pride in being part of an organisation taking practical action on climate and health.
What role do you think partnerships like this play in addressing environmental and social challenges?
Complex challenges like climate change and health and social inequality can’t be solved by any one organisation alone. It requires corporate partners, organisations like Landcare Australia to help drive change at the local level whilst also advocating to government for prioritisation and policy change.
Through our corporate partnership with Landcare Australia, we can make a start at the grass roots level with high impact, scalable solutions that address multiple challenges at once: healthier people, stronger communities and a more resilient natural environment. They also help ensure that action is grounded in local context and delivers benefits where they matter most.
What advice would you give to other corporates considering partnerships in the environmental or community space?
Start with shared values and a clear understanding of the impact you want to create. The strongest partnerships are those built on trust, mutual goals, open dialogue on challenges and a long-term commitment rather than short term outcomes.
Sustainability is a long-term plan. You need to be willing to take the big step to long term gains and start local and, in the communities, where the work needs to be done before thinking nationally. When partnerships are approached this way, they can deliver real change for people, place and planet.
As environmental and social challenges continue to grow in complexity, partnerships like that between Bupa and Landcare Australia highlight what’s possible when shared purpose meets action done in the community where the work needs to be done. By investing in long-term, community-led solutions, Bupa is not only contributing to healthier ecosystems, but also fostering stronger, more resilient communities.
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