Divorce is destructive to the environment

Divorce is bad for the environment. All over the world, the number of divorce cases is increasing, and every single family split will result in two new houses.

"A family that is full of practical use of resources more effectively than a separated family , " Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University, USA, analyzed the harmful effects of divorce on the lips. School on the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this week.

Adding more homes also means more land, water and energy, Liu explained.

Houses with fewer people will not be as effective as houses with many people living together. For example, it uses the same amount of heat for heating or air conditioning, although there are only 2 or 4 people. A home there

Some people or just one person still use a refrigerator. In addition, two people in two different apartments also need two dishwashers, instead of just one.

For each person, the use of more water or electricity is not a big problem, but in the whole community, it accumulates into a huge number. In the United States, for example, in 2005 there were 16.5 million homes owned by a divorced person, while only more than 60 million homes were fully owned by couples.

Per capita, the divorce's apartment also consumes an average of electricity per month higher than the family's apartment with both husband and wife, where many people can share a television, listen to the same radio. , cook on the same oven and eat rice under the same number of electric balls.

In the US, that cost increases about $ 6.9 billion per year, not to mention $ 3.6 billion in water.

And this situation is not only in the US. Liu also saw a similar situation in 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa from between 1998 and 2002. "People are talking about protecting the environment and fighting changes. climate, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered, " Liu said.

He also stressed that he did not condemn the divorce: "Some couples really have to break up." However, "there is another way to preserve the environment is to live with others and that will reduce the impact".

Thuan An