In April 2025 Royal Mail unveiled a solar-powered postbox design with solar panels, a barcode scanner, and a larger hatch to accommodate parcels.

These solar-panelled postboxes are now being rolled out across UK in one of the biggest changes to the iconic design over a century.

Around 3,500 of the “postboxes of the future” are being introduced after trials in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire earlier this year and will now be sdeen in cities in the UK including Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Sunderland.

Royal Mail has committed to achieving net-zero by 2040 and has announced interim (2030) targets externally validated by the Science-based Target Initiative (SBTi).

The organisation claims to be the UK’s greenest delivery option for letters and parcels based on average gCO2e emissions per parcel delivered by UK parcel operators and maintains the UK’s largest electric van delivery fleet with around 7,000 electric vans.

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