Wasting Gasoline by the Drop, Literally

If you drive a vehicle, you most probably fill up gas. And you’re definitely aware of how many times you pump gas and the money you give up doing so. Sometimes, you leave you’re house, get in and start you’re car, and CRAP…you’re almost out of gas, and you’re already late for class or work. You rush to the gas station, shove the nozzle in the gas tank and impatiently wait for the click once the pumping is done. You reach for the nozzle, take it out, and you notice some drops of gas spilling from the nozzle. Some of us even shake the nozzle around as not to waste those drops.

Have you ever wondered how much gas (and money) we’re wasting from these drops? If we are, is there a solution to this? Let’s try to figure it out. Judging from experience, lets say a person spills two teaspoons of gas on average per pump. There are 240 million vehicles in the U.S., and on average one gas station visit per week per person. This means there are around 12,342,857,400 people filling up gas per year. So, people spill 24,685,714,800 (24.7 billion) teaspoons of gas per year.

Finally, this means we spill about 32,142,858 (32.1 million) gallons of gasoline each year! And this is not accounting for all the other ways Americans spill and waste gas.

Are we wasting money? I’d we we are – and lest we not forget the tens of millions of gallons of an already near extinct substance that we use to power our world.

What on earth could be done about this? Well for one, more efficient pump nozzles that, once pumping is stopped and the nozzle lever clicks, the nozzle hole closes from the outside world, therefore…not spilling any gasoline, especially during of one those times when you’re rushing to be somehwere and are bound to spill some drops of gasoline.