2025 Deloitte UK Partner Meeting

Client: Deloitte

Magazine, London

The 2025 Deloitte UK Partner Meeting set a new benchmark for sustainable conferences by embedding ESG as a core organising principle across strategy, experience and delivery. Delivered by Brands at Work in close partnership with Deloitte’s WorldClimate team, the event demonstrated how sustainability can actually enhance ambition, scale and experience.

Bringing together ~1,000 senior leaders for one of Deloitte’s most complex events, the conference moved beyond a traditional carbon-led approach. Instead, it adopted a holistic sustainability strategy balancing environmental impact, social value, governance and behavioural change. This approach culminated in Deloitte’s first-ever externally certified Zero Waste UK Partner Meeting.

Sustainability was embedded early through a collaborative, learning-led process. Structured workshops with stakeholders built shared capability, introducing concepts such as Impact Areas and Hotspots, improvement loops and insights from previous events. This reframed sustainability as a strategic design challenge, ensuring key decisions were addressed before creative, technical and operational choices were locked in.

A Project Sustainability Action Plan (PSAP) underpinned delivery, ensuring waste, materials, travel, accessibility, inclusivity, social impact and supplier practices were considered collectively. Carbon was tracked through TRACE to provide robust, auditable data, but treated as one tool within a wider decision-making ecosystem. Zero waste was identified as a deliberate ‘Potential for Positive Change’ goal, sharpening design and operational choices across build, catering, logistics and onsite behaviours.

Clear governance and shared accountability were established through circulated policies, onsite audits and continuous feedback loops, while sustainability was designed into the delegate journey through clear communications, onsite signage and digital touchpoints. This shifted sustainability from passive compliance to active participation.

The outcomes were independently verified: 99.5% of waste diverted from landfill and incineration, zero waste achieved, and 6.5 tonnes of waste responsibly managed. Deloitte has committed to scaling this approach across future events, setting a new standard for sustainable conferences.