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Kent police warn drivers in Tunbridge Wells to check brakes before travelling after six incidents since blamed on fox cubs chewing through cables

Drivers in Tunbridge Wells have been left outraged after hungry foxes apparently chewed through the brake cables of several cars. Kent police have now warned drivers to check their brakes before setting off on journeys.

Officers called on wildlife expert John Bryant to determine whether there was an explanation other than deliberate damage to six vehicles in the second half of May. He concluded that a family of teenage fox cubs, rather than a human vandal, had gnawed through the brake cables.

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There are two butterfly summers underway in Britain right now. If you have the good fortune to be a silver-studded blue or a large skipper in the West Country you are leaping out of your chrysalis and dancing in the sunshine.

If you were unlucky enough to be an egg laid in eastern England you are still stuck in the pupal stage, perhaps so chilled and damp you will never take to the skies.

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You know that feeling when you open the fridge and are met with something “on the nose”. We all know what food waste looks and smells like.

But food waste stinks in more ways than one. It is expensive, costing the average household over A$2,200 a year, and it undermines the resilience and sustainability of our food supply.

A new report from our Foodprint Melbourne Project has estimated the amount of food that is wasted in feeding Melbourne. We found that feeding Melbourne generates more than 900,000 tonnes of edible food waste every year, or over 200 kg per person.

This is enough to feed more than 2 million people for a year*.

Food waste occurs at different stages for each food type. Foodprint Melbourne Undermining sustainability

Growing this wasted food uses 180 gigalitres of water each year, or 113 litres per person per day. This is equivalent to running your shower for an extra 10 minutes a day.

This wasted food also uses around 3.6 million hectares of land – around 41 ha per person, or more than 20 times the area of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

And this wasted food is responsible for around 2.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, 60% of which is generated by food waste rotting in landfill, and the rest in producing the wasted food.

This uneaten food is not only a source of unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions. It represents a waste of natural resources that are in increasingly limited supply.

Australia is a water-scarce region that is likely to become drier due to climate change, while only 6% of Australia’s land is suitable for growing crops.

With the associated waste of natural resources, high levels of food waste add to the challenge of producing sufficient food to feed a growing population.

Reducing food waste

There are many ways to reduce food waste at home. These include making meal plans, sharing leftover food with friends or neighbours, checking the fridge before going shopping and storing food correctly.

The Cloud-Freezer app can help you to keep track of what’s in your freezer and fridge. Worm farms, bokashi bins and other forms of composting are also great ways to divert food waste from landfill.

While we can all take steps to reduce food waste at home, we need to look at the bigger picture. Our research shows that more than 60% of food waste is generated before food reaches your fridge or freezer.

Strict standards defining the shape, size and colour of fresh fruit and vegetables in supermarkets can mean that a significant proportion of a crop never leaves the farm.

Low prices for second-grade produce can make it financially unviable for farmers to pick, pack and ship imperfect produce. Pressure to keep supermarket shelves full for appearance’s sake, losses during food processing and storage problems also lead to food being wasted.

Initiatives that aim to make more imperfect fruit and vegetables available, such as Woolworth’s Odd Bunch campaign, go some way to reducing this problem, but more needs to be done.

Our research estimates that if food waste was halved across the food supply chain, Melbourne could save 1.8 million hectares of land, 90 million litres of water and avoid 1.3 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year.

We need to halve food waste

In recognition of the significant challenge that food waste represents to sustainable food systems, the new Sustainable Development Goals set a target to halve the global food waste per person that is generated by retailers and consumers by 2030.

The United States government has also set a national target to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. It has established a cross-sector partnership of stakeholders across the food system to tackle the problem.

The UK government has been an early mover in taking action to tackle food waste. In 2007, it launched the WRAP Love Food Hate Waste program aimed at reducing food waste. An evaluation in 2012 showed that avoidable waste of food and drink (that could have been eaten) had fallen by 21% in five years following the launch of the program.

Most of this reduction has been in household food waste. The WRAP program is now working with the food industry to reduce waste in other sectors. The successful UK Love Food Hate Waste program aimed at reducing household food waste has been taken up by state governments in Victoria and New South Wales.

Australia is developing a national food waste strategy – the Food Waste 2025 Strategy – and stakeholders from across the food supply chain meet this month to discuss how to reduce food waste.

Australia should follow suit in setting a target to halve food waste across the food supply chain to put Australia’s food system on a more sustainable footing.

*Correction: This figure has been updated. It previously incorrectly stated that Melbourne’s food waste is enough to feed 2,000 people per year.

Seona Candy is a research fellow on the Foodprint Melbourne project, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. Project partners include the City of Melbourne and the peak bodies representing the local government areas in Melbourne's city fringe foodbowl. She has previously received funding from an Australian Research Council Linkage grant on the project ‘Modelling policy interventions to protect Australia's food security in the face of environmental sustainability challenges’ (LP120100168), a collaboration between researchers at the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL) at the University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Australian National University. She is currently also receiving funding from the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living for a project investigating urban innovations for post-carbon resilient cities.

Jennifer Sheridan is a researcher on the Foodprint Melbourne project, which which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. Project partners include the City of Melbourne and the peak bodies representing the local government areas in Melbourne's city fringe foodbowl.

Rachel Carey is a Research Fellow on the Foodprint Melbourne project, which is funded by the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation. Project partners include the City of Melbourne and the peak bodies representing the local government areas in Melbourne's city fringe foodbowl. She is also a Research Fellow on the project 'Regulating Food Labels: The case of free range food products in Australia', which is funded by the Australian Research Council.

Shoppers in East Anchorage sit quietly for hours on Thursday and watch a mother moose give birth and then bond with her newborn calf in the parking of a Lowe’s hardware store. The store set up a safe zone for the mother and calf until the two eventually left the area

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Tiny particles of plastic litter in oceans causing deaths, stunted growth and altering behaviour of some fish that feed on them, research shows

Fish are being killed, and prevented from reaching maturity, by the litter of plastic particles finding their way into the world’s oceans, new research has proved.

Some young fish have been found to prefer tiny particles of plastic to their natural food sources, effectively starving them before they can reproduce.

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Barack Obama tightens restriction on sale of elephant ivory within the US to clamp down on illegal trade

Barack Obama imposed a near total ban on the commercial trade in elephant ivory on Thursday in an effort to choke off smuggling networks and end the slaughter of African wildlife.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service rules ban the sale of elephant ivory across state lines, and deepen restrictions on international ivory sales.

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Nepal's army begins work to drain rising waters in a lake near Everest, one the highest projects of its kind.

Multiple listings of banned species found and since Guardian investigation 19 ads were closed down – but controlling the trade is akin to a game of whack-a-mole

A killer algae, a monstrous pondweed, a tree that has infested the Everglades and a dozen more of the US’s most environmentally destructive plants have been discovered for sale on eBay. Online traders told the Guardian that ignorance of the law led them to create listings that had spread hundreds of illegal specimens across the country.

Ebay hosted multiple listings for 15 species from the federal noxious weeds list the nation’s highest level of plant biosecurity. Most offered import to the US from abroad. But six sellers were hawking plants from within the country.

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The world needs to move away from industrial agriculture to avoid ecological, social and human health crises, say scientists

A new approach to farming is needed to safeguard human health and avoid rising air and water pollution, high greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, a group of 20 leading agronomists, health, nutrition and social scientists has concluded.

Rather than the giant feedlots used to rear animals or the uniform crop monocultures that now dominate farming worldwide, the solution is to diversify agriculture and re-orient it around ecological practices, says the report (pdf) by the International panel of experts on sustainable food systems (IPES-Food).

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Georgia O’Keeffe camping with Ansel Adams, paintings of the Tetons and comparisons of Yellowstone from 1871 and now are some of the highlights at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. A series of exhibitions celebrates a range of arts focused on the anniversary of the national parks, running now until 28 August

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Following a four-month wait, the clutch of eggs belonging to a curious Slovenian cave salamander has started to hatch.

Exclusive: Guardian investigation reveals testing regimes similar to that of Flint were in place in major cities including Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia

• Water departments to change lead-testing methods after investigation

At least 33 cities across 17 US states have used water testing “cheats” that potentially conceal dangerous levels of lead, a Guardian investigation launched in the wake of the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has found.

Related: Chicago residents take action to be rid of lead pipes as fear of toxic water grows

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Instructions provided varied greatly, ranging from those that contained protocols the EPA advised against a decade ago to those that were periodically updated

• At least 33 US cities used water testing ‘cheats’ over lead concerns

Water departments that use controversial lead-testing practices have told the Guardian they will change their methods after an investigation revealed they were not following environmental guidelines.

Most of the water departments involved said they used the testing methods because state governments told them to, federal guidance was not clear, or they had not received any word that practices may underestimate lead content.

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The Bropkas meet the grid

In what must surely be a first for the Conversation, I am writing this post from the village of Sakteng in remote eastern Bhutan. That I can do so is a remarkable testimony to the will of the Bhutanese government in the electrification of what has to be one of the most difficult countries in the World to electrify.

Sakteng is one of Bhutan’s two main Bropka settlements. To get to Sakteng we walked from Merak, the other main Bropka settlement. It took us 8-hours trekking over the Nakchung pass at 4,100 m, though the locals take only half that time. From Sakteng to the road head is another 2 hours walk.

The Bropkas are yak herders that originate from Tibet, and inhabit the high mountains along the north eastern border of Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh in neighbouring India. In many respects, Bropka life seems little changed from time immemorial, governed by the seasonal movement of their yak herds up and down the precipitous Himalayan mountains slopes. Traditional dress remains very much the order of the day with men in their dear skin jackets and woman adorned by their astonishing yak fur hats. But lives in these remote villages have changed in very real and tangible ways.

Bropka women from the village of Merak in eastern Bhutan, with their distinctive yak-fur hats.

Despite the road only just now reaching Merak, and not planned to get to Sakteng for a few years yet, both villages are on the grid, and have been for almost 10 years. Mobile telephony arrived soon after electricity.

A nation defined by steepness

Like few other countries, Bhutan is defined by steepness.

As anyone who has flown into the only international airport at Paro understands, precipitous slopes rise alarmingly even in the flattest parts of the country. Everywhere, the densely forested slopes are covered with landslide debris - primed for further collapse given the slightest nudge. I doubt that there is any country with a greater steepness index. One of the Himalaya’s most iconic images, the Taktshang monastery, testifies to the way the Bhutanese so readily accommodate this steepness in their daily life.

The Taktshang (Tiger’s Nest) Monastry, Bhutan.

By comparison with other segments of the Himalaya, the Bhutanese frontal ranges bordering the Indian plains of Assam and West Bengal are unusually steep. The steepness has afforded a natural defence that has helped isolate this remote kingdom for generations. The traditional Bhutanese strongholds lie in regions of comparatively low relief at 1500-3000 metres elevation, between the steep frontal ranges and the towering peaks of the high Himalayan along its northern border with Tibet. In more recent times this very steepness has created political distress of its own kind, as once welcome Nepali settlers of southern borderlands were evicted creating some 200,000 refugees.

But its topographic steepness comes with another penalty - the steep cost of moving things around.

On this trip we started our geological work in the south east corner of the country near the outpost of Daifam. By the way the crow flies it is just 250 kms from the nation’s capital Thimphu.

You can’t get to Daifam from Thimphu without leaving Bhutan and traversing through Assam. The quickest route is via the border town of Phuntsholing, 5 hours from Thimphu, and then another 9 hours via Assam. Alternatively you can take Bhutan’s main “highway” east from Thimphu to Trashigang (20 hours), down to Sandrup Jongkhar (5 hours) and across Assam (5 hours). Crows would appear to have it easy in Bhutan.

The isolated villages in the mountains to the north of Daifam are also mostly connected to the grid. To do so required carrying all the poles and wires, often up to a day’s walk up steep slopes through thick forest. Remote rural houses are provided with 100 units of electricity free, but do not go close to consuming that.

In the Bangtar district, on the southern border between Daifam and Sandrup Jongkhar, we met the electrical engineer helping build the transmission line that will send power from a hydro plant near Mongar in the north down to Assam in India. He explained it in some places it will take 2-days by foot to carry the material for the poles and wires from the road head to the proposed transmission route. All of Bhutan’s grid supplied electricity is sourced from hydro, and exports already greatly exceed domestic consumption.

The question of coal

Back in Australia, our coal lobby is fond of quotes of the ilk … “_Only when Third World children can do homework at night using cheap coal-fired electricity can they escape from poverty” .

And at least some in our government seem of a like mind.

Why, might we ask, does it matter that it is just “cheap coal-fired” electricity that alone will alleviate poverty? Why does not cheap hydro, geothermal, nuclear or whatever else, also do the trick?

No doubt coal has been a useful source of electricity in the third world, and will likely remain so for some time given that not all countries are endowed with the hydro resources of the Bhutanese. But is clear that Bhutan puts paid to the idea that coal alone can alleviate poverty.

But Bhutan also shows that there is something more fundamental that our coal lobby is loathe to acknowledge, and it speaks to the very paradox that lies at the heart of their claim - given that cheap coal has been around powering electricity systems for over 150 years, why are any children still living in poverty?

Could it be that the purported saviour of the world’s poor - the coal industry - doesn’t really have such a flash track record in the altruism stakes after all?

Bhutan shows that it is not really coal or any other source of energy that is the missing ingredient in providing electricity to children of the Third World.

Despite the immense impediment to transporting anything in such incredibly steep and forested terrain, Bhutan’s remarkable program of electrification suggests the real missing ingredient in providing access to energy is the will of government.

Disclosure

Mike Sandiford receives funding from the Australian Research Council for his geological research.

Thai authorities says they will press charges against the controversial Tiger Temple, after 40 dead cubs were found during a raid on the site.

Aboriginal doctor and researcher Prof Alex Brown has some interesting ideas about how we can harness the wisdom of the longest continuous surviving culture in the world.

A dagger entombed alongside the mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was made with iron that came from a meteorite, researchers say.

Violent storms and downpours have lashed parts of northern Europe in recent days, leaving four dead in Germany, breaching the banks of the Seine in Paris and flooding rural roads and villages

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As scientists warn the future of the Great Barrier Reef looks even bleaker than feared, we want to see the impacts of global warming on your part of the country

Climate change has put the Great Barrier Reef into dire trouble, raising water temperatures and causing its worst bleaching event in recorded history. Researchers have warned that now is the last chance to step in and give it a fighting chance.

Meanwhile, Australia is drying out, and world heritage forests in Tasmania have burnt for the first time ever.

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EU directives have helped to protect an array of animals – even though agricultural policy has sometimes had a negative effect

From the sea to the land to the air, EU directives on habitats and birds have protected and enabled the recovery of wildlife, including dolphins, orchids and butterflies and the booming marsh-dwelling bird the bittern.

But, with the intensification of farming having seriously harmed wildlife in past decades, the impact of the EU’s huge common agricultural policy (CAP), has often been in the opposite direction.

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