There was a story from the child book author Thomas Brezina (Austrian), who wrote the series “Knickerbocker Bande”, which is about 4 childs/teens, who do some detective work and solve stuff.
I absolutely loved that series as a child and I’ve read like…I don’t know dozens of them
(After that he created ‘Tom Turbo’ which was more meant for a younger audience)

Anyway, I had a audiobook cassette, which was about a killed scientist, that created “Müllmampfer” (stuff the eats trash) and it would just eat it and it’s gone with that

I’m still having that song in my ear after more than 30 years
“Müllmampfer, Müllmampfer,
die Welt, die braucht Müllmampfer.
Sie fressen jeden Abfall auf und Abfall gibt es hier zu Hauf!”

Roughly translated: "Trash-Eater, Trash-Eater,
The world, it needs Trash-Eaters.
They eat all the trash and there is a abundance of trash’

So, even 30 years ago, we all were aware of this problem
But as always, capitalism wins, because we need to create new stuff, else the economy can’t grow - and as we all know, infinite growth in a finite system isn’t possible

I’m also remembering stories from my school time (in a technical high school), where they told us, that Phillips just trashed completely newly produced DVD players, because selling them at lower prices, would have crashed the market and would have brought in a net negative for their future products.

Long story, short:
This system is just not sustainable in any way…