The City of Sunny Isles Beach swaps parking meters for trees

Published on October 27, 2025

The City of Sunny Isles Beach has signed up for Meters for Trees, the multi-award-winning tree planting initiative from PayByPhone, a global leader in mobile parking payments, effective immediately.

Julio Davila, Code Compliance manager, says, “By partnering with PayByPhone on Meters for Trees, Sunny Isles Beach is advancing sustainable parking while contributing to reforestation efforts. This program allows us to support broader environmental restoration goals while continuing to reduce emissions and modernize our parking infrastructure.”

PayByPhone, a parking payments provider in Sunny Isles Beach since 2016 across its eight 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 Sunny Isles Beach in establishing a green legacy by removing parking hardware and planting trees while at the same time saving costs. Removing payment hardware and encouraging digital parking payments helps to reduce costly compliance issues and limits the need for expensive readers in the payment hardware. In return, trees are planted in the City’s name benefitting the environment.

The City of Sunny Isles Beach has recently removed approximately 11 single space parking meters, with PayByPhone agreeing to plant one tree for every multi-space pay station and for every ten single space parking meters that are removed. Each tree planted 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 Sunny Isles Beach 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 paybyphone.com/meters-for-trees.