Atom Economy

From what I can gather, atom economy is a way to reduce the amount of pollution created in chemical processes by balancing out the amount of reactant atoms with the amount of product generated. The reason this has become part of the 12 principles of green chemistry is the increase in cost of petrochemicals and increased awareness of waste pollution. Industries must have gotten overly excited by the huge profit from consumer demands in the past to only just be considering such a crucial aspect of production now