Divorce and the Environment

    With the success of documentary films, like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour," the environment is coming back into the media spotlight. But did you know that divorce is one of the causes leading to environmental waste?  

According to a recent article in "Science Daily," divorce is bad for the environment. Because people move away from each other when they divorce, that creates more separate households. Each household takes up additional energy use. The survey was performed by Jianguo "Jack" Liu and Eunice Yu at Michigan State University.  

Liu told Science Daily, "Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households."  

The idea is less complicated than it sounds. A regular household uses paper products with things like toilet paper, paper towels, phone books and more.  Water is used for dishes, showers and washing the car.  Cooking may not seem a waste, but it can be when the person lives alone. Using the stove to make eggs for one person requires the same amount of energy as cooking eggs for morel.
 
According to Michigan State University's study, keeping a refrigerator uses the same energy everywhere, whether there are two or four family members - energy waste made worse with more households keeping refrigerators. Another example of energy consumption is heating a home in winter or air conditioning one in summer.

Now multiply that by two. Then multiply it by the fact that according to most surveys, half of marriages end in divorce. That means most households will end up doubling wasted water, energy, garbage and paper resources.  

For people uninterested in staying together for the environment, there are some solutions.

One good way is to recycle. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, almost one-third of garbage in the United States is now recycled, compared to only about 16 percent in 1984. That includes "52 percent of all paper, 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles, 45 percent of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans, 63 percent of all steel packaging and 67 percent of all major appliances are now recycled."  

Next, examine chemical use in your home. "One of the biggest culprits in ocean pollution is phosphates, common in laundry detergents and some cleaning products," according to an article in Share Guide, a health magazine. Consider scaling back on the number of loads of laundry you do each week.

10 TIPS ON HOW TO HELP THE ENVIRONMENT

Divorce leads to environmental waste, because people living apart doubles the amount of energy, water, garbage and paper wasted into two new households. Educational Web site ThinkQuest.org outlines ways to help the enivronment: