Mobile parking payment provider PayByPhone has been awarded a prestigious SEAL Business Sustainability Award for its ground-breaking environmental initiative Meters for Trees, the first carbon reduction programme of its kind in the UK.

The scheme scooped the SEAL Environmental Initiative Award, which recognises specific environmental and sustainability programmes.

The SEAL Awards celebrate the most sustainable companies globally, commending an organisation’s leadership, transparency and commitment to sustainable business practices.

Jonny Combe, CEO of PayByPhone UK, says: “We realise the need for our business to make a difference and to be part of a positive change for the environment. Meters for Trees provides a simple and cost-effective solution to help UK councils combat pollution at a time when many are declaring an environmental emergency and facing huge challenges in reducing their carbon footprint.”

Meters for Trees is based on a very simple principle: replacing parking machines with trees. Councils sign up to Meters for Trees by committing to remove their parking meters over a period of time and going cashless with PayByPhone.

Cashless parking payment technology helps to improve air quality by removing the need for enforcement and maintenance vehicles, which would otherwise be on the roads collecting cash from parking meters and maintaining them, clocking up miles and releasing harmful carbon dioxide emissions.

For councils that sign up to Meters for Trees, PayByPhone commits to offset roughly one tonne of carbon dioxide for every ten parking machines that exist in a borough through the Portel-Pará REDD project, a Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) audited project in the Amazon rainforest that combats deforestation and by donating one tree to the council.

Councils sign up to Meters for Trees by committing to reduce their parking machines over a period of time and going cashless with PayByPhone.

Adidas, Disneyland Resort and Coca Cola are other brands who have also won SEAL awards.

Matt Harney, SEAL Awards’ Founder, comments: “Our mission is to rigorously assess and celebrate extraordinary sustainability leadership. Companies, CEOs and corporate boards have a simple but not easy choice before them: whether or not to exhibit real leadership by investing in sustainable business practices. The sustainability leaders - like our SEAL Award recipients - can secure lasting legacies for their grandchildren and corporate stakeholders alike.”

The SEAL Award is the sixth sustainability award PayByPhone has won for its groundbreaking Meters for Trees programme, including three Green World awards (one as overall Green Champion for Carbon Reduction in the Transportation category) and two Green Apple awards.

To find out more about PayByPhone’s Meters for Trees sustainability initiative, please visit: https://park.paybyphone.com/metersfortrees/

To find out more about the SEAL Awards, please visit: https://sealawards.com/sustainability-award-2019