Bins are back in the news. It only takes a couple of missed collections, especially in the season of excess, to have irritable householders, beleaguered councils and sanctimonious ministers at loggerheads. We are a society squawking about our inalienable right to have rubbish out of sight and out of mind, when only a few short days ago a lot of that stuff was part of highly desirable goods whose consumption was propping up the economy.

From the food that didn't get eaten and the now-skeletal Christmas tree to the wrapping paper and oceans of other packaging, the stuff has been through our households as fast as a dose of seasonal salts, but now we want shot of it as quickly as possible. Unavoidable food waste is a not a pleasant thing to have lingering on the doorstep, but as to the rest – does it matter if it hangs around? More important, does it matter that it has become waste in the first place?

We know that waste is stuff we don't want, even if it still has utility, which a lot of it does. We know that waste correlates with GDP: the greater our wealth, the greater the discard rate. We know that waste has to be dealt with in some way, but that most of these ways are deeply unpopular with those near the facilities – landfill, incinerators, even recycling and composting plants.

At the other end of the chain, "upstream" from the waste, there are some things we know about consumption. The recession has put a bit of a brake on consumption in the developed economies, but the rest of the world is still growing vigorously and the trend in terms of basic resources needed to fuel that growth is ever upwards. Globally, the quantity of primary stuff needed to make the stuff we all buy (fossil fuels, minerals, timber and other crops) has increased by 50% over the past thirty years, and is projected to do nearly the same again in the next twenty. Yes, we've become more efficient at using materials to produce wealth, but the wealth is always increasing and outstrips the efficiencies. And most resources enter and exit the economy very rapidly, with a woefully small amount being recycled back into the system – in the UK, less than half if we're talking just about materials, but less than a seventh if you count all the stuff that enters the UK economy, including food.

Of course not all of it can be recycled, but much more could be than it presently is, if only the products were better designed. Our "linear economy" way of managing things and therefore losing materials before their productive lives are over means that the upstream damage – any mining or forestry not practiced with the environment in mind, any pollution not properly controlled, any greenhouse gas emissions, any species lost in the course of industrial development, any water contaminated or used irresponsibly – all of this happens more than it needs to. The trouble is that as we in the UK increasingly "offshore" the production of our consumer goods, most of that damage takes place out of sight and mind, just like the disposal of the waste.

Part of the answer lies in design. We still have packaging and products that feature non-recyclable plastics, paper contaminated with glues and other materials so as to confound reprocessing mills, and tricky mixtures of materials that can't be separated into useful components. Electronic goods are a particular problem – a fast-growing sector with high discard rates, featuring products that embed precious metals in complex mixtures of plastics so that separating them out is a specialist and expensive process. Disposable nappies are the saviour of many frazzled parents, but one of the main components of "black bag" (non-recyclable waste) and a materials nightmare, with their mix of paper pulp, plastic, chemical gels and human waste.

New materials are continually coming over the horizon - the composites and nano-technologies that give us stronger, lighter and cleverer products, from cars to face cream, from wind turbine blades to roller skates. But can they be recycled? Few scientists have even asked that question.

It is time we got a grip on our material world. We need some rules that mandate the recyclability and longevity of the products we use, of making it more easily upgraded and ensuring it comes from sustainable sources. Most important, we need these choices made for us, before products even get in front of us – that way we don't have do the information searching and agonising. I am weary of worrying about everything I buy.

Many people will argue that changing the nature of consumption does not alter the fact of consumption, and as the population heads for nine billion instead of six, the idea of designing our way out of the consequences of resource use seems impossible. My belief is that accepting the need to change the nature of products is the first step in understanding in depth the consequences of consumption, and trying to align it with a sustainable rate of exploitation of the riches that nature has bequeathed.

Without rules for products, we won't ever know in detail what materials are going where, and where the consequences are most serious. I also hold fast to the idea of a new design paradigm because it is about being creative and proactive rather than restrictive and resigned. We humans have a come a long way - why waste our talents worrying about bins?

• Julie Hill is the author of the Secret Life of Stuff, out 13 January published by Vintage