Paris (AFP)

A household can save some 669 euros if it keeps its smartphone, laptop, TV and other refrigerator for another year, instead of replacing them, calculated the Environment and Energy Management Agency ( Ademe).

In this report, the experts assessed the financial benefit of keeping eleven everyday consumer products for an additional year beyond their average duration of use.

Thus, 100 euros are saved if you keep your smartphone a year longer compared to the average duration of use of this category of products, 118 euros if it is a laptop, 54 euros for a television set, 50 euros for a refrigerator or 40 euros for an oven, estimates the report (which supposes that there is no recourse to repair at this stage of life of the object).

On a household scale, this saves 669 euros if the use of these 11 products is extended for one year (467 euros for multimedia equipment, 202 euros for household appliances).

Reported over a period of ten years (which can see us changing the phone several times for example), this habit is even more profitable: 963 euros saved if we keep all these products a year longer.

The gain increases to 1,549 euros for two years of additional use and 1,995 euros for three years.

And if it has to be repaired, it remains economically favorable (except for some equipment such as the 30-40 inch TV).

The benefit is also environmental. To avoid changing for a fashion effect is to "delay the production of a new product", notes Pierre Galio, head of the Ademe's Consumption department: yet the stage of production generates 80% of the environmental impact of an object.

Cultural or marketing obsolescence varies by product.

It is precocious in textiles: the French buy 60% more clothing than 15 years ago and keep it half as long, notes Raphaël Guastavi, circular economy expert at Ademe.

Conversely, objects like the bicycle generate "fairly ingrained maintenance habits", when "others have less perceived value, such as the coffee maker or the microwave, which we perceive as irreparable. changes to be made to the citizen ".

© 2020 AFP