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E. coli and salmonella, as well as other food-borne diseases, are costing the US $152 billion every year in health care and other losses, as indicated by a report which was released this Wednesday by a food safety group.

While hybrids were growing in popularity in the US, there was little interest from Europe’s side, where diesel engines remained popular for quite a while. However, looking at the 2010 Geneva auto show, this may very well change soon.

Citroen seems to be on a roll with creating cool looking concepts, and painting them green. The latest to come out from Citroen’s stable is the SURVOLT EV concept that was unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show. While the automaker held back on much of the details, the Survolt has an all-electric drivetrain and the stance of a sportscar.

The way things stand, most of our gadgets have toxic compounds, and manufacturing them includes the use of more toxic compounds. Many companies have made conscious attempts to eliminate these toxins but there has been little success. And that is exactly why IBM deserves kudos for eliminating the use of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) compounds from the company’s chip manufacturing business.

Lighting has always been a major issue when it comes to conserving energy. The currently used methods all have their disadvantages in some way, and the biggest one seems to be related to placement – you’re fairly limited in moving your lights around after placing them.

Recycling plastic effectively would save our world millions of tons of waste, but the bad guy that plastic is, it doesn’t lend itself easily to recycling. There are of course recycle numbers on most plastic containers, but then even these plastics with same numbers often cannot be recycled together. All this basically takes us to huge mountains of plastics that need to be sorted before they can be put to recycling.

Finally, Ferrari has decided to show its green side. The automaker unveiled its first hybrid at the Geneva Motor Show, the 599 HY-KERS. It’s taken Ferrari long enough to make its way to the green car arena, but with the likes of Porsche, Lotus and Audi going the green way, it was only a matter of time before the prancing horse gave its sportscars the environmental makeover.

Syreen concept from Cambridge Consultants rethinks the design and the use of the conventional syringe, and looks for a more environmentally friendly, and less material intensive solution. Changes made to the construction and packaging of the Syreen help to reduce waste in packaging, transportation and the requirement of raw material.

Now that the Geneva Motor Show is in full swing, a number of interesting cars have made their debut. Amongst these is the Audi A1 e-tron concept. The e-tron functions somewhat like the Chevrolet Volt, that is, the concept makes use of a range extender engine to power the batteries. A1 e-tron uses the power dense Wankel rotary engine/generator for the purpose, for a better performance.

Sweden is set to build 2000 new wind turbines during the next ten years, as a part of its project aimed at dramatically increasing the country’s production of renewable energy – this was all revealed in a statement by Enterprise and Energy Minister Maud Olofsson on Tuesday.