Parking fines in Portsmouth to ditch single use plastics

RECEIVING a parking fine in the city will now be more environmentally friendly as biodegradable packaging is set to be trialled.

Penalty charge notice bags that break down in landfills within six months will be used across Portsmouth this summer in a bid to crack down on single use plastic.

And new yellow design of the casing will replace the old blue style in order to make them more obvious to drivers.

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Portsmouth City Council's environment and climate change boss, Councillor Dave Ashmore, said: 'I’m thrilled that the council is trialling these plastic-free penalty charge notice bags.

'These new bags will help us to reduce our environmental impact and help tackle plastic pollution. It's another step towards being a single-use plastic free local authority.'

Cllr Lynne Stagg, cabinet member for traffic and transportation, agreed. 'Much as it's important to keep parking as safe as possible and sometimes that involves issuing penalty notices, I'm really glad to see that we as a council are getting rid of an unnecessary plastic cover to the penalty notices,' she said.

'This is one more way that we can keep cutting our use of plastic.'

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More than 12 million penalty charge notices are issued in the UK every year - the majority of which come in single use plastic envelopes.

Mike Simpson , the council's sales director for parking added: 'We are delighted to have been able to design, develop and launch a more environmentally friendly product to replace the long standing, damaging plastic bag.'

The trial will run until the end of the year.

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