My travels in America have brought home to me how, as consumers, we are utterly spoilt.

Stepping outside our homes, we are assaulted by an overload of products.

Take Starbucks. In America, there is not only the usual wide range of coffees but a selection of milk - non-fat, 2 per cent, low-fat, half-fat, full-fat and soy.

Is it all necessary? For some it is almost a matter of life and death.

I was appalled when I saw a woman get extremely - and I may say disproportionately - upset when she had to settle for 2 per cent milk, as there was no non-fat. Thank goodness her choice of bagel was available, otherwise things might have turned nasty.

Manufacturers are taking advantage of our demand for choice and producing a glut of goods that we do not need.

Two such products that have come to my notice are a soap and a laundry detergent.

The soap is sold in the US and its gimmick is that it is wrapped in a non-slip cover so that it will not slide out of children's hands in the bath.

The other I saw in London. It was a box of small capsules of detergent. Each contained the correct amount of liquid for one wash.

The pitch behind these products is that they solve serious "problems" for the consumer and therefore are needed.

The products use more packaging and add to an already over-saturated market.

We have all become over-consumers.

I am not putting myself on a self-righteous pedestal. I over-consume with the best of them. Two of my weaknesses are shoes and writing paper.

However, it is time to make amends. Not only do we need to consider the necessity of our purchases every time we approach the till, but we need to take a different attitude to the things we already own.

A prevalent trait is that once something is not working properly, e.g. a television, we replace it rather than have it mended. Or maybe we want a newer, shinier model with a flat screen, so we buy one, even though the other is perfectly functional.

This greed for consumer items is not only a sociological problem but an environmental one as well.

We are creating lifestyles for ourselves where we have everything at our fingertips. We are becoming spoilt brats. And this over-consumption leads to waste.

The packaging, the manufacturing processes, the old goods that are replaced with newer, "better" ones - they all cause unnecessary pollution.

It is time to simplify our lives before we lose ourselves amid all this material wealth.

else_7@hotmail.com