Since the time humans first became aware as a global society of the negative effect we have on our environment, we have had our nature compared to parasites and/or cancer. We consume until we destroy. You'll see this theme running through a lot of the core ideas of environmentalism. This would lead you to believe that humans are the problem both to the planet and themselves and that it is inherent to their nature to be wasteful and destructive. This popularly held belief is inaccurate. We as humans do commonly behave in this manner but it is not inherent to human beings its inherent to living organisms and even to some extent matter and energy.
Enter the idea of biological competition. Many species in an environment competing over limited resources that are needed to survive. Every organism is trying to acquire the resources it needs to prolong its life. All organisms produce waste that in excess will harm their environment (and themselves). They all consume resources until it is no longer possible or feasible to do so. Those resources are consumed by chemical reactions that are favorable to the survival of that organism. We even see this behavior among atoms and molecules which will compete over electrons to have stronger reactions, which produce waste, even to the detriment (or rather the reshaping) of their environment.
Enter scarcity. The idea that there is a very perceivable limit (from the perspective of an organism) to the resources needed for an organism to have the favorable chemical reactions it needs to survive. This is where living things get crafty in the pursuit of survival and develop more efficient ways of doing things. Subsequently, they develop new and better ways of accomplishing the goal of resource consumption. This could mean stealing them from other organisms of different species or of the same. Different species seem to be the preferred method of most species (but not exclusive to).
Without human beings in their modern sense. Most other species pay little global concern to the amount of waste they produce beyond being aware that they do not like being around it. For every bit of waste an organism produces another organism or natural phenomenon has found a way to capitalize on the wasted resources and return them to the environment. It is these opportunistic natural processes that have lead to stable and sustainable environments. Thus, life goes on and does not buckle under its own weight. Most people have a concept of this either formally or through observation. Consumption and waste isn't so much human as it is a temperament of life itself.
Enter the human being. We have thumbs, we have big brains, big ideas, and we no longer adapt to our environment we force our environment to adapt to us through the use of tools constructed from the environment. We don't consume the resources as they occur but use tools to abstract them into even more useful resources to ourselves. We get to have our favorable reactions for life with more freedom and variety than probably any other multi-cellular organism. This has gone so unchecked by nature that we no longer have other organisms or predators that can effectively inhibit us. However, we can very easily consume the resources of other species without limitation. Subsequently, the frequency and the complexity of our reactions has developed faster than any other organism has evolved to consume the waste.