Charity worker cuts the carbon but not the romance on Valentines Day

|PIC1|Tearfund's Campaigns Officer Ben Clowney will be ditching the extortionately priced table at his local restaurant to do something more 'al fresco' with his Valentine date on Thursday. Clowney, otherwise known as 'Low Carbon Man' will be wooing his lady low carbon style.

Planning the perfect romantic, yet carbon free Valentine's dinner date, 26-year-old Clowney will be cooking up a storm with the food from local farmers markets - not collected by car of course, and eating by the light of his wind up lantern.

The venue will be next to his tent, pitched in his car parking space at Tearfund's Teddington offices where Ben works. He had been living in a tent for the last week without heat, electricity or hot water, and has travelled everywhere by foot, bike and even canoe as he attempts to reduce his carbon emissions by 95 per cent.

Clowney campaigns on climate change as part of his job at Tearfund, and his 'Low Carbon Man' challenge is to draw attention to Tearfund's Carbon Fast - a forty-day journey through Lent, with a simple energy saving action per day, such as snubbing plastic bags or leaving the dishwasher a day off.

He has taken his carbon fast to the extreme but his romantic tendencies have not suffered. "I have been living like this to try and cut my emissions as much as possible and that includes Valentines Day," he said.

"It is the perfect opportunity to have a really special date and go back to basics, made even better in the knowledge that it is as low carbon as possible."

And that does not mean scrimping on quality either. Clowney's girlfriend, Ari Dejonge, seems suitably impressed with all the effort that he has gone to for their romantic evening.

"I've never had dinner in the car park before...but I think dinner by a wind up lamp might be just as romantic as candles," she said.