It used to be that things were built to last, so  those things were passed down generation by generation, sometimes for hundreds of years. I often noticed when in England that ancient furniture was not redone and fixed up as often as here in the states, as they were road of how long it had been used in their family.
In our country, things are cheaply made to be thrown away and replaced. That idea is wasting the raw materials used from the beginning. With ever more limiting resources, you can only make more and more by putting less and less in each product