WE live in a consumer society – a society based on conspicuous consumption, much of it of products that we don’t really need, and many more that are frivolous luxuries.

An unavoidable function of such a system is waste.

In this country alone we discard several billion poundsworth of perfectly good food annually, often for purely frivolous reasons (like it’s a couple of days past its sell-by date).

At the same time, we may note that millions of children in the so-called Third World are starving or dying of chronic malnutrition.

Another vital component of such an economic system is an all-out attack on the viability of our planetary home whose resources we are wrecking and squandering with total disregard for the welfare of our posterity, let alone the other creatures with whom we share this planet.

Yet it does not need to be like this. It is perfectly possible, as has been shown to be case, to live comfortably and happily and at the same time inexpensively, even frugally. Such a lifestyle would be based on an accurate assessment of our own interests, and also on respect for those of our posterity and those of our planetary neighbours and of the planet itself.

Tony Kelly, Crook.