Indeed, integrative design often makes large resource savings work better and cost less than small ones.
Modern society uses natural resources extremely inefficiently.
And as for renewable resources, many of them trees and fish, for example are being used faster than they're being renewed. Depleting resources in this way is an unsustainable proposition, with potentially grave consequences for society as well as the environment. Furthermore, using more resources than necessary to do a given job often indirectly causes other problems, which have a way of snowballing. But that's not all. But perhaps most importantly, inefficiency wastes money.