What are the keys to a wasteless economy?

Question

Life, itself, is very efficient. Plants make oxygen, animals breathe oxygen and make carbond dioxide for plants. Animals doo doo on the ground and that helps stuff to grow. Plus, there's a whole other slew of crazy systems going on that keeps life on this planet stable.

Why can't humans operate the same way? The life that we have created through machines and computers is highly wasteful. We send out huge amounts of gases into the air and expect them to just disappear. Not to mention, we have landfills upon landfills of garbage that's never going to be used again. We're overpopulated to the extent that we're killing off other species to make room for us.

Are we as a species really that bad at balancing ourselves with nature? I'm not talking hippy mumbojumbo. There are resources necessary to our survival that we will squander if we don't wise up.

There must be a better way to handle life than to ignore the consequences of our actions.

Answer 1

From EPA:

Waste is lost raw material, lost product, lost resource, lost profit. Generating significant amounts of waste is not sustainable for today's society. Nearly everything we do leaves behind some waste. In the United States, as well as in the rest of the world, accelerating pressures on natural resources, the impact of new technologies on resource use, increasing waste generation, and the need for more sustainable approaches to using natural resources represent new challenges to our society.

The National Waste Minimization Program supports efforts that promote a more sustainable society, reduce the amounts of waste generated, and lower the toxicity and persistence of those wastes that are, of necessity, generated.