Spring cleaning | Decluttering, a green gesture?

Tidying popess Marie Kondo’s admission of letting go did not sound the death knell for decluttering. How can we embrace movement without contributing to filling the landfills with objects that no longer ignite a spark of joy in us? For thought.

Although, after maintaining the obsession with decluttering with her books and reality TV shows on Netflix, Marie Kondo threw in the towel by declaring that she had abandoned the injunction to perfection and lived in a messy house.

Even if disorder and accumulation try to take their revenge, even giving birth to “Cluttercore”, a trend noticed on TikTok which particularly reaches the younger generation, minimalism, with its many promises of well-being, continues to arouse envy among many, as spring cleaning fever sets in.

In February, the minimalist challenge organized by Marie-Sophie Berruex (Marie-So La Minimaliste) generated a lot of enthusiasm on Facebook, generating hundreds of comments under each of her daily publications. Clothing, kitchen utensils, tools, toys: at the end of the month, the participants – the pressure of tidying up and decluttering still falls mainly on women – have shed more than 400 objects.

But what is the impact of this trend on the environment? Its effects, particularly on the volume of waste generated, are difficult to quantify.

“There is no scientific data that can be linked to this phenomenon,” says Karel Ménard, general director of the Quebec Common Front for Ecological Waste Management. “We’ve been working on this for several years, as a dilettante, but we can’t really put together a highly technical file. »

An awareness which can thus lead to a reduction in consumption and, in turn, to the future generation of waste.

However, experienced differently, this approach will only fuel the consumption cycle and contribute to increasing the volume of materials sent to landfill. Last month, the UN warned the population about the quantity of waste that continues to grow around the world.

“Many people think that there is no harm in consuming as long as you ‘give away’ what you no longer want,” Myra J. Hird, professor of environmental studies at the Queen’s University and author of the book Canada’s Waste Flows. However, she added, “the reality is that most of the products we dispose of in Canada go to the landfill.”

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For Karel Ménard, the situation is more complex. “It requires a certain personal effort to part with goods with which we have been in contact for years and with which we have had certain experiences,” says the man who says he still owns the leather coat purchased with his first paycheck. “People are going to make sure they have a second life. Some may say that we are just moving waste by giving it to someone else to manage, but the idea is to follow up on it by not replacing that good. . So through attrition, there will certainly be fewer and fewer materials and goods in circulation. »

However, he agrees that some items of little value will have to be thrown away. Above all, donating these items to charities does not guarantee them a new life, since most are buried under donations, particularly clothing. “Eventually, what we give could end up in the trash, but that’s perhaps less serious than putting it in the trash ourselves,” he thinks.

Avoid the pitfalls

For Hélène Boissonneault as well as several other decluttering specialists who direct their approach towards minimalism, it is imperative that such an approach is accompanied by deep, long-term reflection.

“No matter how much we declutter, if we re-clutter, it will be a spinning wheel,” observes M^me Boissonneault, co-founder of Effect PH, a company that offers training and conferences on decluttering and other topics related to minimalism. During her training, she addresses the pitfalls that can lead to an increase in consumption.

Another pitfall, according to the one who trained in psychology and behavior change, is confusing organization with decluttering. “By organizing, we will of course be better off in our home because we will find things more easily, but to organize, people will often consume products (like accessories and storage furniture). »

More and more space

In his eyes, keeping superfluous objects does nothing to help the environment. By giving them to someone, you can prevent that person from going to the store to buy new items. But, above all, an object that is not used takes up space. “We occupy spaces that are far too large to store things that are not needed,” she notes. It’s expensive environmentally speaking. » She adds that we keep a lot of goods “just in case”, because knowing them at hand is reassuring.

Between 1990 and 2021, the average surface area of ​​housing increased by 23% in Quebec, from 108 m^⁠2 at 133 m^⁠2according to data from the Office of Energy Efficiency published in the 2024 edition of the report State of energy in Quebec. “The area of ​​floor space requiring heating continued to increase faster than the population,” the report notes. In addition to being smaller, apartments require 28% less energy per square meter, per year, than a single-family home.

Consult the State of Energy in Quebec report

And that’s without counting the storage units which, used to meet a temporary need, sometimes turn into long-term rentals.

Minimalism, an Eldorado?

However, it is not certain that adopting a minimalist lifestyle directly leads to a reduction in the carbon footprint of households.

A review of the scientific literature, carried out in 2023 by Australian psychology researchers, points out that although minimalism may offer well-being benefits, research on carbon emissions is inconclusive.

Although studies examining the carbon footprint of low-consumption lifestyles, such as voluntary simplicity, tend to support this possibility, the researchers indicate that it is also possible that “minimalists increase their non-material consumption, but more carbon-intensive, for example by traveling abroad more often.

They also claim that decluttering can be practiced to make room for other possessions, leading to an ongoing cycle of buying and purging.

For decluttering to have a lasting effect, it must be motivated by emotional reasons and not by fashion, believes Hélène Boissonneault. “By finding out why I want to declutter and why I am decluttering, this is what will probably allow the process to be more effective in the long term. »