Lemon Lane

For many event agencies, ESG still sits on the sidelines: Lemon Lane set out to change that. Its impact strategy, honed through the staging of monday.com's Elevate 2025 at ExCeL London, reworked sustainability into an operating system, rather than a post-event scorecard. Faced with a larger, more complex edition of the flagship conference and a new client lead unfamiliar with event ESG frameworks, the agency chose to build sustainability into governance, supplier selection, meeting rhythms and reporting to hit the earliest planning stages. The judges praised this as "a well-embedded ESG strategy that moves beyond bolt-on initiatives into a structured, end-to-end approach".

The framework runs through three linked phases: goal-setting and value chain alignment, action and delivery, plus measurement, learning and iteration. In practice, that meant ESG was present on every work-in-progress agenda, supplier RFPs were shaped by environmental and social criteria, 13 freelancers were trained in event-specific responsibilities, and a live reporting structure was shared across teams, partners and client stakeholders. Lemon Lane also anchored performance in per-participant carbon and waste metrics, allowing like-for-like benchmarking as Elevate grew in scale.

That discipline translated into tangible gains. Compared with the previous year's event at the same venue, waste fell from 7.36kg to 5.48kg per participant and carbon dropped from 36.29kg to 30.67kg CO2e per participant. Plant-forward catering, hire-led production, reusable beMatrix builds, recyclable REWIND carpet and accessibility-led design all played their part, while surplus food was donated and all items purchased were suitable for reuse on future events, to extend the legacy beyond the venue. Crucially, Lemon Lane did not hide the gaps: missing travel data, venue governance overlaps and energy-reporting failures were acknowledged and used to tighten contract clauses, supplier briefings and future planning, turning one event's friction points into a smarter, more scalable strategy.