If you could see Earth from space on any Tuesday in 2023, you would witness the most extraordinary magic trick in human history: eight billion people making 2.01 billion tons of garbage disappear every year. Not actually disappear—that would be genuine magic. This is the far more impressive feat of collective self-deception, the willing suspension of disbelief that allows us to throw something "away" and never think about it again.
This is the story of humanity's greatest trick: the invention of "away." From Mohenjo-daro's 4,500-year-old drainage systems—toilets in every home, a sanitation achievement Western civilization wouldn't match for four millennia—to Rome's Cloaca Maxima, still functioning after 2,600 years. From the Great Stink of 1858 that finally forced London to build sewers, to the modern landfills and incinerators hiding our refuse.
Once you know how the magic trick works, you can never unsee the sleight of hand. And the trick is about to stop working.