Causing or tending to cause depletion; having the quality of using up or exhausting.
From 'deplete' + '-ive' (adjective suffix meaning tending toward). This adjective form emerged in technical and scientific writing to describe actions that exhaust resources.
A 'depletive practice' sounds more serious and scientific than saying something is 'wasteful'—it's the kind of word environmental scientists use to make resource destruction sound appropriately alarming.
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