We humans constantly refine our experiences, to arrive at better solutions for whatever we wish to achieve. And when we work together, this amplifies whatever single humans do, and produces an end result that is larger than all energy expended in the collaboration of those people.
Refining also makes materials more pure, for instance to build our lithium ion batteries that power just about everything nowadays. However we need to re-engineer how various refining methods use hazardous chemicals which need to be recycled in order to not burden the environment. This often makes refining expensive, but re-engineering the process might make it possible to avoid the hazardous stuff, or even lessen the need for that particular refined material altogether.