A booth that practices what it preaches

At ERS 2025, AstraZeneca’s booth didn’t just talk sustainability – it lived it. A fully immersive, low-impact design brought strategy to life while driving engagement.

Find out how we turned ambition into measurable action.

The Challenge

Healthcare leaders are under growing pressure to demonstrate real progress on sustainability – not just talk about it.

As a global leader in respiratory care, the European Respiratory Society’s annual congress 2025 was a key moment in AstraZeneca’s annual calendar – not just to showcase its respiratory pipeline but also to demonstrate its leadership in sustainability.

ERS 2025 needed to deliver on multiple fronts:

• Showcase leadership in sustainable healthcare
• Support a major respiratory pipeline and brand presence
• Reduce environmental impact across materials, logistics and operations
• Communicate a complex sustainability strategy in a clear, engaging way
• Go beyond previous years by further reducing carbon and waste while maintaining a flagship presence

The challenge was clear: create a booth that didn’t just explain sustainability – but proved it.

This meant addressing sustainability across three levels: healthcare ambition, therapy-area progress, and the congress presence itself.

The Solution

We designed a booth where sustainability became both the message and the method – built using Emota’s Enviroplan framework to embed lower-impact decisions at every stage.

A connected booth experience

The space was carefully structured into three distinct but interconnected zones – each with a clear role, yet unified by a single narrative:

• Commercial area featuring three brand pods, large-scale LED walls, interactive touchscreens and informal seating spaces to support product storytelling and conversations
• Medical area focused on corporate and R&D content, with touchpoints for pipeline education, clinical messaging and deeper scientific engagement
• Sustainability area forming the heart of the experience – an immersive walkthrough bringing AstraZeneca’s sustainability ambitions to life

Allocating dedicated space to sustainability storytelling at this scale is highly unusual, reinforcing AstraZeneca’s leadership position.

Together, these zones created a balanced environment that combined education, engagement and brand presence, while guiding delegates through a coherent journey.

Designed around sustainability principles

Every element of the booth was shaped by a clear idea: sustainability should be demonstrated through action, not just messaging.

The design was grounded in the connection between human and planetary health – translating a complex strategy into something physical, intuitive and engaging.

At its centre sat a large-scale layered paper diorama, illustrating a global vision for sustainable healthcare through hand-crafted, low-impact materials.

Key installations brought this story to life:

• A 4m² ‘living lung’, made from vines and seasonal plants, symbolising progress in sustainable respiratory care
• A kinetic materials wheel, revealing the sustainable processes and build choices behind the booth
• A series of tactile storytelling moments, allowing delegates to explore materials, systems and decisions up close

These installations allowed delegates to experience not just the message, but the materials, systems and thinking behind the build.

The result was a guided walkthrough that connected commercial, medical and sustainability narratives – turning the booth into a physical expression of AstraZeneca’s journey and making sustainability tangible at every step.

Lower impact by design

Sustainability was designed in from the start, guided by Enviroplan’s zero-waste ambition – prioritisng low impact materials, minimising production waste and designing for flat-pack efficiency – every detail designed to reduce impact.

• Structure, signage and furniture created from 100% recyclable, FSC-certified paperboard
• Flooring made with a proportion of recycled material (up to 65% lower embodied carbon versus traditional carpet tiles), installed with no adhesive enabling reuse across multiple future events
• Print was applied directly to the cardboard booth structures, avoiding the need for additional graphic elements
• Overhead banners were made from drop paper, which is re-purposed into the infinitely recyclable ‘drop cake’ (rigid paper board) post event
• Lightweight, flat-pack construction to minimise transport and logistics impact
• Energy-efficient LED systems with reduced overnight power consumption
• Locally sourced planting donated post-event
• No single-use printed collateral – materials printed on demand
• Packaging fully paper-based and tracked through TRACE
• Low-impact catering with no single-use plastics and locally sourced products

Every decision was intentional – reducing impact while maintaining a high-quality, immersive experience.

The Value Created

The booth delivered measurable impact – combining high engagement with meaningful sustainability gains.

Sustainability impact:

• 82% less production waste compared to a traditional build
• 56% lower carbon emissions across production and waste compared to a traditional build
• 99% of materials reused, repurposed or recycled post-event
• 88% BOSS overall sustainability score
• Potential for Positive Change designation
• Supported 8 UN SDGs
• ~3,000 miles of road travel saved by using sea freight
• Freight reduced by approximately one full truck through flat-pack construction

Independently measured using TRACE and BOSS tools for full lifecycle impact

Engagement performance:

• 7,962 unique visitors – 41% of all ERS attendees
• 73% conversion from passers-by to visitors
• 43% returning visitors
• Average dwell time of 6 minutes 26 seconds
• Over 5,100 digital content interactions

By turning sustainability into something delegates could see, touch and experience, the booth didn’t just communicate AstraZeneca’s ambitions – it made them credible, memorable and measurable.

“The end result was truly incredible, and it genuinely brought our sustainability ambitions to life. You nailed the design, the craftmanship and of course the living lungs feature just stole the show!

We have received amazing feedback from colleagues (with numerous teams wanting the designs at their meetings). Your commitment to always going the extra mile did not go unnoticed throughout the whole process!”

– Senior Global Project Manager, Congress – Respiratory and Immunology, AstraZeneca