The US economy now consumes absolute less of many physical resources (metals, timber, paper, fertilizer, water, energy) in total even as GDP and population keep rising, breaking the historical link between growth and resource throughput. This is absolute decoupling, not just efficiency per dollar, and it began around 2000 for many materials.
Dematerialization is driven by four interacting forces: technological progress, capitalism, responsive government, and public awareness. Technology and capitalism together create the incentive and means to use less, while government and awareness correct for pollution and other harms markets ignore.
Profit-seeking firms under competition treat physical inputs as costs to be minimized, so they continually substitute information, design, and efficiency for materials and energy. The motive to dematerialize is not environmental virtue but the drive to cut the expense of molecules.
Technology reduces material use through four patterns: making products lighter (slim aluminum cans), replacing one resource with a better one (fiber optic glass for copper), eliminating devices entirely by absorbing them into software (the smartphone replacing cameras, maps, recorders), and using sensors and computation to run systems with less input.
Capitalism dematerializes resources that firms must pay for, but it will not on its own reduce harms like greenhouse emissions or species loss that are external to prices. Correcting these requires government action, such as pollution pricing or regulation, because the market has no built-in incentive to address uncounted costs.
American crop output has risen steadily for decades while total cropland acreage peaked around 1980 and has since declined, with tens of millions of acres returning toward nature. Higher yields from better seeds, fertilizer, and machinery let more food come from less land.