2025 Leadership Award Winners
Environment Positive - The All England Lawn Tennis Club
Environment Positive is the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s sustainability framework, introduced in late 2019 and embedded across The Wimbledon Championships and its year round operations. The framework provides a central approach for protecting the environment, reducing impacts and demonstrating that working towards operating in harmony with nature can deliver benefits for sport, communities, and beyond.
The framework was built around four interconnected pillars: reducing emissions, improving resource efficiency, supporting nature, and using Wimbledon’s influence to inspire wider action. Through a combination of operational improvements, education, partnerships, and storytelling, the AELTC aimed to make sustainability visible and participatory, creating a community of “environment positive champions” across players, staff, guests, suppliers, and partners.
Reducing emissions across the Club’s operations was a key focus. As part of its ambition to achieve net zero operations by 2030, the AELTC electrified 30 of its 42 kitchens, removed gas from the Aorangi Player Pavilion to create a fossil fuel free building, installed 750m² of solar photovoltaic arrays, and eliminated generator use in the parkland by extending the site’s renewable electricity supply. Since 2019, emissions from gas have reduced by 35%, electricity emissions by 48%, and fuel emissions by 81%.
Resource efficiency and reuse have also been central to the framework. The reusable cup scheme, introduced in 2021, helped encourage behaviour change while raising around £130,000 each year for the Wimbledon Foundation. More than 100 water refill points are available across the site, while initiatives such as carbon labelling on menus, sustainable construction approaches, and moisture sensors on tennis courts helped reduce resource use throughout the operation.
Supporting nature was another defining element of Environment Positive. The AELTC creates and enhances habitats across the Grounds, including the Living Wall on No.1 Court, wildflower meadows, green and brown roofs, wetland areas and hedgerows. At the Community Tennis Centre in Raynes Park, habitat improvements even saw hedgehogs returning to the site.
Beyond its own operations, the AELTC used Wimbledon’s global platform to encourage wider action. Players, partners, and broadcasters helped share Environment Positive messages with audiences in more than 200 territories worldwide, while sustainability education areas, panel discussions, visits, and collaborations helped inspire organisations across sport and beyond. During The 2025 Championships alone, sustainability and environmental activity generated 289 mentions across online, print, and broadcast media.
The approach also created opportunities for collaboration across the sector. Hundreds of organisations visit Wimbledon to learn from their sustainability work, while collaborations with official partners support innovations such as the player and spectator water refill systems, renewable technology projects and community access to nature through long term partnerships with four regional Wildlife Trusts, via the Championing Nature project.
Environment Positive demonstrated how a major sporting event could integrate sustainability into every aspect of its operations while using its influence to encourage wider change.
BASIS Principles demonstrated: Energy and Emissions; Waste Management; Water and Effluents; Biodiversity and Habitats; Procurement and Employment; Healthy Options; Engagement and Education; Economy and Community.