I think you've missed the mark a little. The waste we've made, as a modern civilisation is a by-product of our real activity, which is the thing you missed.
Our real activity is net destruction of everything created by nature, if we define nature as everything except us.
If we didn't destroy, or stopped destroying, as is our opportunity now, we wouldn't be creating pollution, our by-products would not be things useless or toxic to nature and us. Our output, including by products, in creative mode, would be things that enhance nature or contribute in some way towards all life on Earth.
To create, we just need to use the energy of the sun.
Would we still create toxic plastics if we were not using oil? No.
Even the heat energy we might produce by the heat dissipated from our activities solar powered, worst case can only ever be the heat that would have been generated by the sun if nature didn't use it.
The constant conversion of the energy of the sun to things other than heat is creation by definition.
Whereas the constant conversion of things created by nature to waste including heat, is destruction by definition.
The heat we generate by destruction has to add to the natural heating of the Earth by the sun.
We can show this formally just by saying E=MC squared, and thinking exactly what it means in the general sense.
The reason science doesn't do this much is that profit, is related to extraction. There has to be extraction for there to be any such thing as profit. They are systemically mutually dependent.
Since science as a human activity itself has to be funded by profit, it doesn't question it's own activity for profit, because we'll, it just isn't profitable. Any activity not for profit will not be funded by any any activity for profit. Occam's razor itself is more often used for this than any other purpose, it seems to me, so it appears to be a more or less for profit instrument.
Reaearch into immortality, or anything spiritual, or anything leading ultimately to the end of things currently profited from, is cut short, usually by Occam's razor, whether this is formally acknowledged or not.
In other words, our destruction to date is a kind of self perpetuating loop, we are tied into it by every human feeling massive pressure to participate, by the financial system of money as debt, if we don't contribute to the destruction then we don't get any money, which of course we each need to live, because it conveys the 150 or so Joules per second each of our bodies need 24/7 to live so of course we contribute, even when we can see the destruction being done, we have no choice.
The key to breaking that loop, is to recognise where it can be broken.
We saw it during covid lockdowns, issue of massive stimulus.
I've shown how mathematically it is sustainable, because it stacked up with previously unmonetised economic product created from solar. We saw how it made oil prices go negative, the only time in history, and we saw how the dollar itself went up in value during issue, not down, as we might have expected if there had never been creation of economic product from solar, actual creation rather than destruction.
On the pyramids, as well as physically pillaging them, we have profited on the information about them. Only the profitable information about them survives, or was even made up, by the most profitable suggestions about them selling in books, including educational books and scientific papers.
Papers not aligning with the for profit convention have no chance of being supported by peer review by everyone tied into the profit driven system, even religions were drawn in, at least most religions. There are some exceptions including some flavors of Yoruba, which profit driven science dismisses as voodoo or witchcraft, useless if it isn't for profit.
So actually there is very little about the pyramids, or the Egyptians, or actually any ancient history at all that we really know for sure, now we know almost everything recorded about it had to be for profit.
We don't even know if they were built by humans, if we are brutally honest about how the constant activity for profit reduces all sources of "Information" to nothing more than a sales pitch. Only the profitable parts of any story are left in. All dialog, about all things, including the unsustainability of our own existence is becoming just a sales pitch.
We simply do not record anything that was not for profit.
This is diectly related to our activity of destruction, every profitable transaction, the money paid by me to buy my blueberries from Peru in Tesco in UK, for example, every penny spent in this system, is another systemic cut, where our net activity as a species is destruction, even mindless destruction, because we are mostly unaware of it, as it probably has to be for it to keep functioning.
The one thing I see standing in your way from seeing this clearly Indi is your money, which you are privileged to have.
This shapes what you have to see and agree with, or not agree with.
Anyhow it will all change very soon, now driven by nature, beyond control of anyone, driven by nature, as is already underway.
As mentioned earlier, there is the growing economic product created from solar, now acting in the economy. We can't get around that, I am happy to say, it is the thing currently unmonetised, again, since massive stimulus monetising it stopped.
Utilities energy supply is shifting to solar, despite all attempts of the profit driven system to stop it.
It is manifesting as inflation, in other words devaluation of all money issued as debt.
I guess folk who have a lot of that stashed away, as any kind of capital, won't see this as good news because it means pretty much the end of the basic point of possessing things, to gain privelige.
Folk with little money or capital saved won't care about it much, zero money or capital means nothing to be lost, only something to be gained, in an unselfish way.
It would be coolest if there could be some kind of formal privelige armistice, a handover of the old system to the new, maybe some point where those priveliged might say they'd be happy to hand over their own privelige, to enable everyone to become just as priveliged, but most importantly, finally sustainable as a species, nobody being blamed for things done previously, we all played a part in it, anyone denying this is lying, really lying to themselves, it seems to me.
I am nothing special for saying this btw, just a Systems Engineer trained to do systems analysis by the profit driven system, who spent some time working non profit, to analyse the system we all know is unsustainable, and ending soon, one way or another.
I don't believe I am alone in knowing this, many others must know it instinctively, you too Indi.
Ai definitely knows it.