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Sainsbury’s launches packaging that shows how long its own-brand ham has been open to stop slices being thrown away

A major UK supermarket is launching a new “smart” label on packets of its own-brand ham in a bid to reduce waste by telling consumers how fresh it is.

Ham is Sainsbury’s top-selling cooked meat product, but many buyers find it difficult to remember how long it has been open. Figures from Wrap, the government’s waste advisory body, reveal that British households throw away 1.9 million slices of ham a day – equivalent to 32,500kg – at a cost of more than £170m a year.

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Whether basking in sunshine in the northern hemisphere or fighting cooler temperatures in the south, we’d like to see the wildlife you discover

After the June heatwaves in the northern hemisphere, July has got off to a slightly more uneven start, but there will still be plenty of sun rays around. As winter takes hold of the southern hemisphere, the temperatures will get even cooler. So what sort of wildlife will we all discover on our doorsteps? We’d love to see your photos of the July wildlife near you.

You can share your July wildlife photos, videos and stories with us by clicking on the blue ‘Contribute’ buttons. Or if you’re out and about you can look for our assignments in the new Guardian app.

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What do you see when you look at an elephant? The world’s biggest land mammal – or a giant data store, sharing information in a living, breathing network?

Elephants have such sad expressive faces that is hard to imagine how anyone could harm them. They have drawn lips and sagging shoulders; a long, drooping demeanour; sad, knowing eyes capable of laying on the guilt. Yet, it would appear that guilt is not enough to save them. Eighty years ago there were perhaps 6 to 9 million African and Asian elephants. Today there are roughly half a million left. Day by day, they are getting closer to extinction.

Perhaps we need some new ideas. Perhaps it is time for a different perspective on why elephants need saving. Rather than their bodies, maybe it is their shared memories and experience that we might one day come to value. This is the argument that I’d like to put forward in this piece.

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Group of 13 people lock themselves to objects to stop vehicles entering Cuadrilla site at Fylde, as part of month of action

Protesters have blockaded the entrance to a fracking site as part of a month of action to resist the controversial drilling process.

The group of 13 protesters, including three local councillors, arrived at the site on Preston New Road in Fylde, Lancashire, in the early hours of Monday morning and locked themselves to objects in an attempt to prevent vehicles entering the site.

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The fine art photographer Diane Tuft travelled to the Arctic Circle to document the fragility of the snowbound landscape as it melts away. The photographs produced on her journey are on show at Marlborough Gallery NYC until 20 July, and an accompanying book, The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape, is published by Assouline

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Illegal fishing, logging and poaching are damaging two thirds of the 57 natural world heritage sites monitored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is drawing attention to their plight. The 41st session of the Unesco World Heritage Committee in Kraków runs until 12 July

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The favorite satellite data of contrarians like Ted Cruz corrected for some errors and ended up hotter

A new paper just published in the Journal of Climate is a stunning setback for the darling of cherry-picking for contrarian scientists and elected officials. Let’s walk though this so we appreciate the impact.

The vast majority of scientists know that the climate is changing, humans are the main reason, and there are going to be severe consequences. We have decades of measurements that prove our understanding of this process. There is simply no debate or dispute.

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India is touted as a rapid adopter of renewable energy, but its energy challenges are complex.

The late 1800s showcased the beauty of America’s public lands in color for the first time. A photographic technique called photochrom was developed, which allowed color to be introduced on to black and white negatives. The process was used extensively by William Henry Jackson, whose early pictures of Yellowstone helped convince Congress to make it the first national park in 1872. Here is a selection of the collection held by the Library of Congress

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Garnaut says Australia could likely meet its reduction targets without a CET, rendering it useless and debate about it irrelevant. He proposes a dual pathway to resolve the political impasse.

Taskforce head says complexity, scale and political resistance mean key protections could be lost during rollover into law

A taskforce of environmental lawyers is drawing up plans to stop thousands of EU rules protecting rivers, wildlife, coastlines and air quality from being dropped by the government after Brexit.

The EU is the source of most environmental protection in Britain and for 40 years has acted as a monitoring body and enforcer, with powers to fine member states for breaches in the law.

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About 20 per cent of male fish in UK rivers are now showing female characteristics.

SA Water Corporation seeks to build grid-connected, rooftop solar PV system of more than 100kW, plus 50kWh battery storage system and “smart controls.”

Another 141MW of utility-scale solar farms approved for development, as Sunshine State starts to live up to its massive PV potential.

Industry warns that if proposed new battery installation standards remain unchanged, the Australian behind-the-meter battery storage market will be stopped dead in its tracks – and the estimated by the CSIRO at up to 85GWh by 2040 – will simply fail to materialise.

AEMO constrains wind farms in South Australia for first time because there were not enough "synchronous units" as wind output blew above 1200MW.

AAP/Black Inc Books

Melbourne-born author Anna Krien’s latest Quarterly Essay explores the debates on climate change policy in Australia and the ecological effects of not acting.

She interviewed farmers, scientists, Indigenous groups, and activists from Bowen to Port Augusta. She says climate change denialism has transformed into “climate change nihilism”.

Krien says the Finkel review provides another opportunity in a long line of proposals to take up the challenge of legislating clean energy. “We just need to get that foot in the door. The door has been flapping in the wind for the past decade.”

On a current frontline battle – the planned Adani Carmichael coalmine – she found the people who would be affected were being ignored and blindsided.

Meanwhile, the potential for exploitation of local Indigenous peoples through “opaque” native title legislation was high. “Outsiders are not meant to understand it and to tell you the truth you get the sense that insiders aren’t meant to understand it either.”

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Appletreewick, Yorkshire Dales Its body is as dark as the river at its deepest, where the peat-stained water turns as black as molasses

The heatwave hits its stride before breakfast, building to a dog day intensity that will relent only with the last red moments of the sunset. For the long hours between, an endless afternoon, the light ceases to move, training its intensity on the elderflower, oxeye daisies and buttercups of Wharfedale until their colours take on the bleach-brightness that signals high summer in England.

The weather brings people out of hibernation, and into encounters with unfamiliar forms of life. “Look at the size of that crayfish!” The woman paddling in the untypically warm river Wharfe near Appletreewick points near her feet, causing half a dozen swimmers to coalesce around the spectacle. Children express something between amazement and open-mouthed horror.

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Minerals Council halves cost of coal, doubles cost of wind and solar and comes up with fantasy number of $27bn for a 650MW renewable plant.

There will be a cost to decarbonise the economy, its' just a lot less than the cost of not decarbonising. Generation prices will stay high, network prices will be sticky, and the incentive for “grid defection” is going to continue.