Family Law
Divorce Harms the Environment
Posted Dec 4, 2007, 01:46 pm CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Here’s a new reason to avoid divorce: It harms the environment.
A new study by Michigan State University researchers says divorced American households in 2005 alone spent 46 percent more per person on electricity and 56 percent more on water because they now lived in separate households.
If they had stayed together, the couples would have saved 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water, according to a Washington Post report on the study.
"For a long time we've blamed industries for environmental problems,” said one of the authors, Jianguo Liu. “One thing we've ignored is the household."