Divorce isn't resource efficient, study finds

WASHINGTON — Divorce can be bad for the environment. Each time a family dissolves, the result is two new households.

"A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household," said Jianguo Liu, a sustainability expert with Michigan State University.

He and fellow researcher Eunice Yu concluded that in 2005, in the United States alone, divorced households could have saved 38 million rooms, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water if their "resource-use efficiency" had been comparable to that of married households.

Liu's analysis of the environmental impact of divorce appears in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Besides the United States, Liu looked at 11 other countries, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002.

In the 11, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been a million fewer households using energy and water in these countries.

"People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered," Liu said.

Orly Zeewy, a brand-name consultant from Wynnewood, Pa., said when she and her husband split, the fate of the planet was the least of her worries.

But now, she can see the point, and not just related to the per-capita use of resources.

Her children, now 10 and 13, have two of just about everything, from clothing to toys. "You're basically setting up two households for the kids, so that they feel they live there."

Stuff "can get multiplied pretty quickly," she said.

Liu said that with the number of divorces rising, so is the number of households, outpacing population growth itself.

Liu, who is married, suggested that if more people knew the environmental consequences of divorce, more of them might choose to stay together.

Not likely, Zeewy said. "I can't imagine anyone would ever tell you they would stay together for the sake of the environment. That would not be at the top of my list."