10:10 is a global campaign to cut carbon by 10% a year – starting in 2010.

Any person, family, business, school or other organization can cut 10% – and by working together we can make sure our actions count.  Currently 78,343people, 2,889 businesses and 1,750 schools have signed up to make a difference.  Launched in September 2009, it has seen singers, actors, our own coalition Government, industrialists, designers, authors and cooks sign up. 

It’s about making everyone accountable for their actions – switching off the lights as you leave a room, walking or cycling to work twice a week, knowing where your food comes from – and as importantly, what you throw away! 

The campaign has gone all the way around the world and is a  full community project in 10 countries and 4 continents. The important thing to remember is that while everyone has their role to play, nobody is alone in doing this. We can all support each other.

A perfect example of this is the 10:10 Lighter Later campaign which launched in March this year, as the UK entered British Summer Time.

The premise was simple and incredibly common-sense: by moving the clocks forward by one hour to GMT+2 in summer and GMT+1 in winter we could make the most of our daylight hours, rather than the current system, under which hours of daylight are wasted early in the mornings when most of us are still asleep.

Within less than two months more than 11,000 people had signed a letter to prime minister David Cameron, which will be delivered to 10 Downing Street on June 21, the summer solstice, and the day on which most precious daylight is wasted (at the height of summer it gets light at around 4.30am!).

The letter explained the very clear benefits of Lighter Later: a reduction in the UK’s carbon emissions of 500,000 tonnes during winter alone, in addition to a fall in road deaths (around 100 a year), and a boost to the tourism and leisure industries of around £3billion annually.

On the same day, Dr Elizabeth Garnsey of Cambridge University will present a new piece of peer-reviewed research to a gathering of MPs and lords at the Houses of Parliament. Meanwhile, Adrian Sanders MP has tabled an Early Day Motion asking MPs to support Lighter Later’s suggestions.

Lighter Later is just another example of 10:10’s ethos: that carbon reduction makes people happier and healthier.

This year, the people behind 10:10 are proving that getting carbon under control can be easy, affordable and maybe even (whisper it) fun.

Throughout 2011, 10:10 will be getting to work on the next 10% - getting more people involved and pushing politicians to ensure that low carbon living is never harder than it needs to be. This is what a small team of people with monumental enthusiasm have already achieved, imagine what we can do together?