Action stations for music industry's green watchdog.

Environmental pressure group Julie's Bicycle, in conjunction with Music Week, steps up a gear in its fight for a greener music industry with a campaign that will test commitment to reducing our carbon footprint

The music industry's commitment to climate change will be tested - literally - over the coming few months as environmental pressure group Julie's Bicycle launches a series of initiatives to help cut music's carbon footprint. The pressure group, formed this summer to create an industry-wide consensus on emission reduction and low energy use, in tandem with developing practical and sustainable solutions, has already launched a major auditing project in conjunction with Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute to measure the total carbon footprint of the UK music industry.

The results of this, which also surveys attitudes from those working in the business towards climate change, are expected to be presented at a leading conference in the spring.

In the meantime, Music Week and Julie's Bicycle are teaming up to fight the effects of global warming with a new green campaign called A Greener Music Industry, which will highlight key environmental issues affecting the business and the ways the industry can improve energy use, cut unnecessary packaging, reduce transport and improve waste disposal and recycling.

In the first practical energy management programme covered by this campaign, Julie's Bicycle will be inviting 15 small companies to apply for a free audit. Julie's Bicycle's founder, the former Creative & Cultural Skills executive Al Tickell, says this first project is a way "to enable small companies and creatives, such as writers, to see what energy use is now and how that can translate into a carbon footprint".

The London Development Agency is providing funding for this initial project, which will run the carbon rule over an array of different companies in the sector, including label Heavenly, publisher Bug Music and 9PR. To qualify for the project, the companies need to be London- based, employ fewer than 10 people and have a commitment to green issues.

"We went for small companies because this project is publicly funded and also small companies are very often missed out because they haven't got the financial resources or time to invest in these things," says Tickell, whose team of auditors and energy experts assisting with this project include Helen Heathfield, a consultant ...