The phrase "a significant waste of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to express that something is a considerable or notable misuse of resources, time, or effort.
Example: "The project turned out to be a significant waste of our budget and manpower."
Alternatives: "a considerable misuse of" or "a major squandering of".
The combination of low pressure on one side and high pressure on the other creates a drag force that must be overcome — a significant waste of energy.
This leads to a significant waste of resources that goes beyond the student and has special relevance in the context of the current economic crisis.
Although effective, they do not distinguish between requests coming from presumably legitimate users and potential attackers, and also lead to a significant waste of energy and computing power.
Joan Picanyol, the center's deputy director, also noted that if the government's goal was to squeeze spending through a management changeover, the forced hiatus will instead amount to "a significant waste of public money, not to talk of the reputational damage that has in any case now been done to this place".
All others were a significant waste of time.
The transmissions of the partial and incomplete files would also raise a significant waste of bandwidth.
From a first glance, it looks like an awfully significant waste of time.
Heating (or cooling) and ventilating a building simultaneously can result in significant waste of energy; recent years have seen much development of waste heat recovery systems (WHRS) to transfer heat from foul exhaust ventilation air to fresh air entering a building.
Although tools for determining the extent of bias in a corpus of studies are invaluable, failure to disclose null or negative findings leads to significant waste of resources in unknowingly repeating failed studies.
Loss of synchronization can lead to continuous packet drops causing significant waste of energy.
Losses of long packets due to collisions can result in significant waste of network radio spectrum and energy [32].
