Dr. Dorree Lynn, psychologist & James Gross, attorney

Divorce Is Not Green

Two can live as cheaply as one but not when it comes to divorce.  When a couple splits up, they need to heat and light two houses.  They use twice as much water.  They need two refrigerators and two stoves.  If children are involved there are the gasoline costs of visitation and even jet fuel if they live far enough apart.

A Michigan State University study by Jianguo “Jack” Liu and Eunice Yu has confirmed that divorce is bad for the environment.  Soaring divorce rates around the would have created more households with fewer people and consumed more resources like energy and water.

Among the findings of the study:

* In the United States alone in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households. Thirty-eight million extra rooms were needed with associated costs for heating and lighting.

* In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households in these countries.

* The numbers of divorced households in these countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000.

* The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households.

Divorce increases world demand for water, space and energy.  It is an overlooked factor in climate change.  The environmental impact of divorce needs to be considered when look for ways to save the global environment.

The study also tracks what happens when people divorce and remarry.  The environmental footprint shrinks back to that of a married household.

This leads to the conclusion that if you want to save the world, stay married, live together or, if you are already divorced, find someone to remarry.