The environmental impact and wellbeing benefits of minimalism

Technological improvements alone will be insufficient to reduce carbon emissions to limit climate change; reducing consumption will also be necessary. Here we investigate minimalism, a low-consumption lifestyle which involves voluntarily reducing material consumption as a possible scalable pathway for consumption reduction. As minimalists aim to own few possessions, they might have a low carbon footprint, but this is yet to be established. This study investigates the environmental impact of minimalism, measured via an ecological footprint calculator in an online survey (N=444). We also investigate wellbeing (measured using life satisfaction and the PANAS), and its association with minimalism. We found that minimalism is negatively associated with ecological footprint and negative affect, positively associated with positive affect, but not associated with life satisfaction. In addition, we investigated subdimensions of minimalism (‘aesthetic’ minimalism, ‘few belongings’ minimalism, and ‘mindful’ minimalism). We found that higher levels of ‘few belongings’ minimalism and ‘mindful’ minimalism were related to a lower ecological footprint, positive affect, and greater environmental concern, while ‘aesthetic’ minimalism was not. ‘Few belongings’ minimalism was also associated with having a more energy efficient house, a smaller goods footprint, purchasing fewer clothes, smaller transport and food footprints, and producing less waste than the other types of minimalism. Our findings suggest that the adoption of minimalism as a low-consumption lifestyle has potential advantages for both the environment and wellbeing, though some facets of minimalism appear more promising than others. • A minimalist lifestyle results in a smaller ecological footprint and greater wellbeing. • Outcomes varied across minimalism subgroups; with least benefit for aesthetic minimalism. • Two-thirds of participants were interested in adopting minimalism or were actively working on it. • These findings suggests that minimalism is an attractive path to reducing consumption.