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The 10:10 campaign aimed to persuade Britain to cut its carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Now 3,000 businesses and 80,000 individuals have signed up â€" and there's still half a year left to go

Inside a modest office tucked down a side alley in Camden, north London, a large blackboard displays an improbable list of names in bright white chalk: Sienna Miller, London Underground, Marks & Spencer, Oxford University, the London borough of Tower Hamlets, Royal Mail, Yorkshire ambulance service, the government of Nepal. As coalitions of the willing go, it takes some beating for diversity.

Eugenie Harvey, director of the 10:10 campaign, which uses this compact, spartan two-storey workspace as its HQ, points to the list with evident pride. "All of these names recently signed up to our campaign in just one week," she says. "It's moments like that which really drive you on."

We're now halfway through 10:10, which was officially launched at Tate Modern last September by the woman who dreamed it up, Franny Armstrong, director of the apocalyptic environmental film The Age of Stupid. Supported by the Guardian, the campaign's primary goal was, and still is, to get people, organisations, companies and even governments to pledge to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010 â€" an intentionally straightforward gesture, both in its simplicity and achievability. To date, 10:10 campaigns have started in a total of 40 countries including the UK, Nepal, France, Germany, Ghana and New Zealand.

Harvey says it's all about "sending signals to our leaders" that emission cuts are attainable and worth pursuing. "The campaign is about amending both behaviour and attitudes. We had a massive surge of members at the beginning, and it has been steadily rising ever since. Globally, we've had around 3,000 businesses sign up and 80,000 individuals. In the UK, around 45% of all councils have now signed up, too."

But the biggest prize to date, according to Harvey, came just three days after the formation of the new coalition government in May, when David Cameron announced that central government would commit itself to reducing its carbon emissions by 10% within 12 months.

"To those who say this is insignificant," Cameron told the audience, "remember this: the UK's public sector has a bigger carbon footprint than the entire waste industry. If we do this, we'll cut the government's energy bills by hundreds of millions of pounds."

Cameron's speech pinpointed a lesson learned by the 10:10 organisers over the last few months. "Rather than talking in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide," Harvey says, "it is better to talk in terms of money saved. We have found there is a major glaze-over factor with 'carbon calculators'."

Yet saving money can only be part of the message, says Ed Gillespie, co-founder of Futerra, the London-based sustainability communications agency. "Concentrating on just cost savings isn't ideal: I always say that money motivations generate weak changes."

To this end, 10:10 has also concentrated on nurturing a sense of community, tapping into what Harvey calls "the malaise of western society: atomisation . . . We want to show that doing your bit alongside others, and sharing the same goals, can actually trigger a rush of endorphins that make you feel happy."

Half a year can seem like a long time in any campaign, but this is particularly true, in the current climate, for an environmental campaign. First there was the deep disappointment of the failure of the Copenhagen summit last December, then the continuing fallout from the hacked University of East Anglia emails. Harvey, though, says these episodes have had surprisingly little impact on 10:10's progress.

"Somewhat perversely, the failure at Copenhagen actually emboldened us, proving we were not redundant. Similarly, Climategate was not the nail in the coffin many people predicted. It hasn't really penetrated the public consciousness in the way some thought would happen. I think the details of Climategate were just too nerdy for most people to worry about.

"What I have noticed over the last six months or so â€" and I would say this is due to the failure at Copenhagen â€" is that funding has become harder to come by," says Harvey. "I think funding organisations had their fingers burned by Copenhagen, and now think people are not persuaded by reduction targets and policy commitments."

Harvey, of course, insists that 10:10 has been good value for money. Since it launched, she estimates it has achieved half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide in pledged reductions. Put another way, that's broadly equivalent to the annual CO₂ output of 50,000 Britons. "Our costs to date have come in around £440,000 and that's mainly [staffing] costs. This works out at about 80p spent per tonne of CO₂ saved."

Camden office, indeed, somewhat densely filled with dozens of volunteers, interns and staff members, such as Harvey.

Gillespie pays tribute to the success of 10:10 in "reaching out, and not just preaching to the converted". But what of the most persistent criticism â€" that the campaign only seeks a pledge to reduce emissions, rather than demanding proof that cuts have actually been made? "We're not really about naming and shaming those who don't follow through with their 10:10 commitments," Harvey says. "We're about the carrot rather than the stick. With public bodies we find that, because they are accountable and already publish detailed audits each year, this is enough to motivate them. But we also offer organisations a facility to help them assess whether they are making progress or not. Our challenge is to persuade these organisations to enact their commitments. We live by Voltaire's motto: 'Perfect is the enemy of the good.'"

And what of Harvey herself? How has she fared reducing her personal carbon footprint? "Probably the biggest impact is reducing my flying," she says. "I used to go back to Australia once a year to see my family, but I will now go back once every two years or so and stay for three months. And all staff now adhere to a strict zero-flights policy when conducting 10:10 business. We have found that some people will seek any excuse they can to avoid doing their bit, and we just can't feed the excuses machine."

Join the 10:10 campaign at 1010global.org/uk/people/join

• That article was amended on July 6, 2010. 10 original said the government, so far signed a pledge 10:10, including the administration of France, Germany, Portugal, Ghana, New Zealand and Norway.