Two days ago, when I spent my lunch hour at Shell, filling up on gas, fish and chips (from Jack and the Box, next door), then eating in the car wash trying not to be sick by the moving washing parts, I thought I had sunk pretty low.* (I share this because some people write to me presuming I have some sort of corner on the market on ethical purity. Oh no. I drive. I throw things out. I just think about it. A lot).

We do after all, often have a choice with which gas station we pump at. And some, say, Shell, are in cahoots with the devil. But they’re not actually as bad as Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco.

Check out this cool chart of social responsibility ranking for gas stations and the folks below, which are the best of the bunch (which may not be saying a lot, but at least if you’re going to plunk down $30-50 for a fill up, you might as well not reward the worst behavior)

BP does alternative energy research.
Citgo funds hurricane relief.
Sunoco signed the Ceres pledge.

Thanks to Ideal Bite for the above information (not the carwash story though). They say that the average person uses 570 gallons a year. That’s at least $1500. It makes a difference where you get it.

*Why did I believe I had sunk so low? A breakdown:

Car washes waste water. We live in a desert without water. So I’d be better off with a bucket.
Car washes uses weird toxic crap to remove dirt. This goes into the groundwater eventually.
Jack in the Box doesn’t recycle its oil for biodiesel vehicles.
The fries in Jack in the Box were heated to precisely the right temperature to result in that sort of cancer causing potato effect you may have heard so much about.
And, finally, Shell has all sorts of human rights abuses, particularly in Africa (Nigeria).