This is one of the main four ideas of w:Natural Capitalism (see natcap.org, the other three are:
- extreme energy conservation
- extreme materials conservation
- redefining all products as services
When these four are done, there is no such thing as "waste" because all waste is a "resource" to something else, and there is no such thing as "products" or even "commodities" since they are defined as harvesting, processing, distributing, collecting and disposal services that happen to provide services to users in between. This is the most powerful idea, since product lifecycle must be considered by the maker not the user.
Is there a w:industrial ecology article in wikipedia? There should also be w:product stewardship and w:service ecology which are the more advanced ideas of assessment.