The City of Coral Gables swaps parking meters for trees
VANCOUVER, CANADA, March 20, 2025 – The City of Coral Gables today announced it has signed up to Meters for Trees, the multi-award-winning tree planting initiative from PayByPhone, a global leader in mobile parking payments, effective immediately.
“Joining PayByPhone’s Meters for Trees is a meaningful way for our city to reinforce what truly sets Coral Gables apart - our lush tree canopy,” said Monica Beltran, the city’s director for Parking, Mobility Services, and Sustainability. “As a Tree City USA for 40 years and counting, we take immense pride in preserving and enhancing our urban forest, which contributes to a more sustainable, resilient, and beautiful Coral Gables for current and future generations. This initiative seamlessly promotes mobile parking payments while directly supporting our city's commitment to environmental stewardship by planting trees that help combat deforestation, reduce urban heat, and mitigate climate change.”
PayByPhone, the parking payments provider for Coral Gables since 2011, across its 73 on- and off-street parking locations, first launched Meters for Trees in the UK in 2019, as part of its broader environmental campaigns, including Green December. These initiatives help forward-thinking cities, universities, and parking operators reduce their costly parking hardware as they opt for a mobile app-based parking service. Over the past five years, PayByPhone’s environmental campaigns have collectively planted over 225,000 trees globally.
Meters for Trees supports the City of Coral Gables in furthering its sustainability initiatives by removing parking hardware and planting trees while at the same time saving costs. Removing payment hardware and encouraging digital parking payments leads to a reduction of costly compliance issues for the City and limits the need for expensive readers in the payment hardware. In return, trees are planted in the City’s name, benefitting the environment.
Under the terms of Meters for Trees, PayByPhone will plant one tree for every multi-space pay station, and one tree for every ten single-space parking meters that are removed in the City of Coral Gables, totalling 313 trees, in 2024. Trees will be planted in Lake Wales Ridge State Forest, in Central Florida, through PayByPhone’s partner, veritree, an organization that connects businesses with verified tree planting projects to elevate global reforestation. In addition to planting trees with veritree, PayByPhone will also contribute $500 to plant trees in Fewell Park in Coral Gables.
Mobile parking payments improve team efficiencies by eliminating the need for vehicles to collect cash and service parking meters and stations. In Coral Gables, as well as helping to improve air quality by eliminating the need for these vehicles, which would be emitting harmful tailpipe gasses, each tree planted in the City’s name absorbs CO₂ as it grows, directly benefitting the environment through carbon footprint reduction as CO₂ is sequestered from the atmosphere.
Carmen Donnell, Managing Director North America for PayByPhone, says, “Welcoming the City of Coral Gables to Meters for Trees is a meaningful step toward building a greener tomorrow. We’re proud to work alongside partners who share our vision of sustainability and environmental stewardship, making it easy for parking operators to contribute to reforestation efforts.”
Meters for Trees is a multi-award-winning initiative, having won 12 international awards, including a Global Gold Award at the 2019 Green World Environment Awards in the Carbon Reduction and Local Authorities categories, the Green Champion Award in Carbon Reduction at the 2019 Green Apple Environment Awards, and the Environmental Initiative Award at the 2020 SEAL Business Sustainability Awards.
For more information about Meters for Trees, please visit www.paybyphone.com/meters-for-trees.
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