Cut back your consumption of carbon rather than chocolate during Lent this year is the message from the Church of England in period of abstinence before Easter.

Two senior bishops and the development charity, Tearfund, hope to persuade Christians to take part in a carbon fast by making daily changes to their lifestyle throughout Lent, which begins tomorrow.

The Lenten tasks to reduce energy consumption include the removal of a prominent light bulb in the home for 40 days and abstinence from the dishwasher for a day. Other ideas for energy-saving range from going without plastic bags and fitting draft excluders to leaving the car at home and eating local food.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who stopped flying for an entire year to reduce his carbon footprint, said that if all 650,000 Christians attending London's 4,000 churches took part, the impact would be significant. 'We can have a measurable impact on the carbon footprint of the capital,' he said. 'I see this as not the dull echo of a fashionable consensus, not the Church jumping on the bandwagon, but as a question of how much we love our neighbour in the 21st century.'

Tearfund is using the campaign to highlight the disparity between energy consumption in developed and developing countries. About 9.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide is emitted per person every year in the UK, compared with just 0.067 tonnes in Ethiopia and 0.24 in Bangladesh.

The Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, who is vice president of Tearfund, said: “It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching. The tragedy is that those with the power to do something about it are least affected, whilst those who are most affected are powerless to bring about change.”

The Lent initiative is part of a wider move by the Church to reduce its carbon footprint. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has announced plans to offset the carbon used in hundreds of flights taken by bishops attending the Lambeth Conference this year. The Church of England has also pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 with its Shrinking the Footprint campaign.

A survey conducted by Tearfund about attitudes to Lent found that three out of five adults would be willing to take energy-saving action during the season of abstinence.

Daily carbon fast ideas for Lent.

Day one

(Ash Wednesday) Remove one light bulb and live without it for the next 40 days.

Day two