The twentieth century gave birth to the throwaway society, an acceleration of life in which the circulation and consumption of industrially produced goods and products demanded more disposal packaging and, indeed, more goods that could be made obsolete more quickly. Eventually this would lead to the growth of vast landfill sites designed to absorb the rubbish of everyday life, which were located on the margins of our towns and cities. These hypertrophied extensions of consumer life remained, for the most part, comfortably out of sight to most of us, ensuring that we could easily forget what we were throwing away.
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