Prydz goes from sexy to green with no-carbon CD

Eric Prydz's number one single "Call On Me", voted sexiest video of all time, featured an aerobics workout that caused Tony Blair to fall off a rowing machine when he saw it in the gym.

But Prydz's next single, "Proper Education", released this week, is set to cause a sensation of another kind: it is the first CD that is totally carbon neutral, from the production process to the distribution.

The charity Global Cool calculated that a total of 58.4 tons of carbon dioxide needed to be offset for the 40,000 CDs to be carbon neutral.

The video itself, directed by Marcus Adams, echoes the CD's environmental credentials. Set on a London estate, a gang break into a block of flats - but instead of committing Asbo-worthy crimes, they switch appliances off standby, change light bulbs for energy-efficient alternatives, and place bricks to save water in toilet cisterns.

"Proper Education" samples Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" - the first time the band have ever allowed their work to be used. Prydz said: "Pink Floyd would always use their videos to get a message across and I really wanted to carry on this spirit. I'd been reading so much in the press about climate change and global warming recently, and felt it would be great to try and empower people to do something about it. It's not a making grand statement. It's just simply saying everyone can do a little and it will make a difference."

The emissions created through the entire process of making the CD will be offset through the Te Apiti wind farm project on the north side of the Manawatu Gorge on North Island, New Zealand. The site's turbines generate enough emission-free electricity to power 45,000 homes.

Dan Morrell, founder of Global Cool, advised Adams on the content of the video. "The doom and gloom surrounding global warming can turn people off. So the video instead features solutions to global warming," he said.

To calculate the emissions from the CD and video, Global Cool worked out how much carbon dioxide would be produced from cameras, staff, costs of travelling to the location, editing time, shipping and distributing CDs.

Mr Morrell said: "We have even taken into account the carbon emissions from sending a courier bike with the master CD from the studio to the plant where the single was being pressed. It is the distribution of the CD that used the most carbon dioxide, almost 60 per cent of the total emissions, as lorries drive across the country to get the single into record shops."

He believes that Prydz's single will encourage other bands to make carbon-neutral music.