Spills from pumping gasoline into cans for lawn use and overfilling mowers and other gardening equipment result in an average of 17 million wasted gallons a year. That’s more petroleum than spilled by the Exxon Valdez in the Gulf of Alaska!

There is a simple reason that propane produces less emissions than gasoline and diesel. Heavier refined fuels are a mixture of longer chain molecules, so of which are not saturated with hydrogen. Examples are toluene and benzene, which are sometimes referred to as cyclical compounds.

Commercial propane is C3H8 (that is 3 carbon atoms, 8 hydrogen atoms). It contains slight amounts of heavier compounds, but does not typically contain the cyclical compounds that gasoline and diesel contain. When these compounds burn "incompletely", the compounds enter the environment as NOx, VOC and CO emissions.

Propane ranks better in toxic emissions when compared to gasoline or diesel. Studies have shown that propane ranks near or better than Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in NOx, VOC and CO emissions.

That is the best part. Propane really started out as a by-product. Propane is part of the "liquids" portion that condenses during natural gas production. The rest of it comes from refineries during the process of making gasoline, diesel and other fuels.

• CO - Carbon Monoxide
• NOx - Nitrogen Oxides
• VOC - Volatile Organic Compounds
• CNG - Compressed Natural Gas