From the floor at ESS Expo 2025: What we learned and what’s next

Published 2 Oct 2025

September marked our return to one of the most significant events in our industry calendar: the ESS Expo.

As the UK’s biggest environmental services event, the ESS Expo brings together key individuals from across a wide range of sectors to share the latest innovations and solutions. This year’s event was the biggest yet with over 14,000 people attending across eight expos covering five key areas: Waste & Recycling, Land Management, Energy & Resource, Water Management, and Air & Emissions.

For us, it was a key opportunity to connect, collaborate, and showcase our expertise. We returned this year with a larger stand, highlighting our capabilities across five critical environmental challenges, and delivering several impactful sessions in both the Contamination & Land Remediation and Water, Wastewater & Environmental Monitoring theatres.

Following two packed days of networking, knowledge sharing and innovation, we’ve taken a moment to reflect and share our top five takeaways from the event.

Responding to the climate challenge

Reflecting the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events in the UK and their widespread impact on industries, climate change was a major theme of this year’s event.

Whilst wildlife presenter and conservationist, Michaela Strachan, delivered an impactful keynote session that highlighted the impacts of climate change on endangered species and the urgent need for global action, several other key climate related themes emerged across the many theatres.

Amongst them, hydrogen’s role in the clean energy transition and how it could contribute towards decarbonising key sectors, and realistic pathways to achieving Net Zero targets by embedding sustainability into business operations emerged as key topics.

Back on our stand, we were kept busy around our climate change pillar as the focus of conversations centred around the specific impacts UK weather events can have on site infrastructure, and exploring the mitigating actions that can be taken to minimise the risks.

Embedding flood risk into environmental strategy

Tying in closely to the broader climate change theme, flood risk was a particular topic of note with local councils, environmental consultancies and infrastructure firms sharing a common concern – the urgent need for resilience planning and early warning systems.

Major flooding incidents in the UK have sparked action around establishing more integrated and proactive approaches that build flood risk into wider water management and climate resilience strategies.

On the stand, conversations with site operators were focused around shifting from reactive to preventive and adaptive environmental strategies. Flood monitoring, the assessment of critical infrastructure such as drainage systems and interceptors, and ensuring key staff are sufficiently trained to react in the event of an incident were key topics.

Scaling land regeneration across the UK

Given our location in the Contamination & Land Remediation Expo, it was perhaps unsurprising that land regeneration was a topic of note. However, this was also a dominant theme across the whole event, tying in with the newly-launched Geotechnical Engineering & Operations Expo.

The intersection between land regeneration and other key topics such as climate resilience, housing development and biodiversity restoration, led to a lot of strategic conversations around how to scale regeneration efforts across the UK.

Environmental consultants and engineers, local authorities, and developers all highlighted the growing urgency to transform brownfield sites and polluted land with these broader themes also playing out on our stand. Our conversations with attendees largely focused on advanced remediation technologies to tackle complex contamination and how remediation efforts can align with sustainable practices.

We explored some of these themes with a host of experts in the opening CLR Expo panel: “Future-Proofing the Ground: UK Land Remediation Beyond 2025". The panellists discussed several key considerations such as the importance of collaboration – including consistent regulator engagement - in recognising wider implications, and the use of early warning systems to help prevent impacts.

Navigating waste regulations and emerging contaminants

Hazardous waste management was flagged within the Resource & Waste Management Expo as a strategic and regulatory priority in light of increasing pressure from environmental legislation and public health concerns.

In particular, chemical and medical waste, legacy industrial pollutants and emerging contaminants such as PFAS and microplastics were of particular concern.

Our first-hand experience from talking with visitors to our stand was that responsible waste management and risk mitigation are the areas where site owners and operators really need expert support.

Aligning biodiversity and corporate sustainability

Biodiversity and sustainability underpinned the whole event this year with attendees from across multiple sectors using the event as a platform to explore how carbon offsetting and energy transition efforts can align with long-term sustainability goals.

Key areas of discussion, both on our stand and across the wider event, included nature based solutions such as wetland reconstruction as way of achieving biodiversity outcomes and understanding the evolving regulations around carbon reporting and offsetting.

On our stand, the exploration of the practical elements of corporate sustainability strategies was a dominant theme, reflecting the broader theme of climate resilience as part of a broader risk management strategy which anchored a lot of conversations.

Over on the CLR Technical Stage, as part of a focus on sustainable remediation, we presented a powerful case study on emergency environmental response and low-impact recovery, led by us. In this session, we highlighted how pollution incidents can be effectively addressed through collaboration, landscape understanding, and progressive low-emission remediation.

Conclusion: From Insight to Action

For us, ESS Expo 2025 reaffirmed its place as a cornerstone event and as an opportunity to engage directly with the issues that matter most to our clients - from climate resilience and flood risk to land regeneration, hazardous waste, and sustainability.

The insights we gained will help to shape how we support clients moving forward. And whilst the challenges are complex, our experience, technical capability, and strategic approach mean we’re well equipped to help navigate them - proactively, compliantly, and sustainably.

If you’re looking to strengthen your environmental resilience, explore remediation strategies, or embed sustainability into your operations, we’re here to help turn insight into action.

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to explore any of the topics we presented at the ESS Expo 2025. our team is here to help. Get in touch to discuss how these insights can support your environmental strategy.