WASHINGTON: Increasing incidences of divorce around the world have a negative impact on the environment, leading to a less efficient use of energy and resources and bigger expenditures on utilities, a study suggested.

"Divorce usually causes a former spouse to move out and form a new household, thus increasing the size of materials and land for housing," said the study by researchers at Michigan State University.

Higher divorce rates "have led to an increasing number of households and ... the average household size and efficiency of resource use per person are lower in divorced households than in married households."

In the United States, the proportion of divorced households jumped from five percent in 1970 to 15 percent in 2000, and numbers have surged even in China where divorce has not been traditionally as common, the study said.

In 2005, US divorced households spent as much as 56 percent more on electricity and water per person than married households, and used up to 61 percent more resources per person than they did before the separation took place.

If divorced households operated with an efficiency similar to married households, "more than 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water could have been saved in the US," it said.

Researchers surveyed 3,283 homes in the United States between 2001 and 2005, and found that divorcing households registered a 61 percent increase in the number of rooms per person, compared with six percent increase in households that remained married.

"Because of higher consumption per person, an individual in a divorced household may also generate more waste (solid, liquid, and gaseous material like greenhouse gases) that contributes to global environmental changes such as climate change and biodiversity loss," it said.