How did frugality morph into hoarding?  I was raised by parents who had come of age at the start of the Great Depression, or shortly thereafter.  My mother saved everything-from string to bread twist ties-cloth sacks were actually made into clothing.  But somewhere along the way such actions, which were frugal or thrifty, and considered virtues, have become the vice of hoarding.  We have at least one television series(probably more) dedicated to the subject.

I would speculate that by diminishing the virtue of frugality which previous generations had revered we have become the disposable society you see today.  Our pollution problems, I believe, in large measure, are due to the loss of  thriftiness in our populace.