The Guardian

My environmentally conscious wife Clare is the keenest recycler possible. She even collects and recycles the silver milk bottle tops that I tend to chuck out. But when it comes to organic food she’s furious. Why? Because she finds it is the worst culprit for wrapping almost everything in plastic and polywrap that cannot be recycled. How, she asks, did we reach the situation where the most environmentally produced food is also the worst for packaging and recycling?

Like many others, the Brignall household despairs at the revelations over the past year that 86% of collected plastic is not actually recycled, and the Blue Planet claim that 8m tonnes of the stuff ends up in oceans.

Exclusive: Boonchai Bach allegedly ran tusk and horn smuggling route from Africa

Police in Thailand have arrested one of the world’s most notorious wildlife traffickers, allegedly involved in the smuggling thousands of tonnes of elephant tusks and rhino horns from Africa to Asia, the Guardian has learned.

Boonchai Bach, who goes by multiple aliases including Bach Mai Limh, was arrested at his operational base in the north-eastern province of Nakhon Phanom, next to the Mekong River on Thursday.

Keyhaven, Hampshire: The brent geese feeding on the grassland are restless, but not because of the people walking along the skyline above them

The mudflats are still, but first impressions are deceptive. On a grey, raw day, we stop on the bridge across the Avon Water as it enters the Keyhaven Marshes. The tide is out, gulls mill in the air, but below us the glutinous foreground seems devoid of life. As our eyes settle to what we are seeing, we realise how misleading those first impressions are. The mudflats are teeming with waders. We’ve left the binoculars in the car and so don’t attempt identification until one long-legged, straight-billed bird wades out to feed, head-down into the stream. In this murky light, it’s impossible to see markings but surely this is a black-tailed godwit.

We press on along the Solent Way, a track lined with lichen-festooned bushes. Near the village, the lichens are mostly orange with shades of pastel green where different varieties fight for possession of the branches. Some of these pale species are so dense that from afar they look like sprigs of meadowsweet thrusting up through the hedgerow.

Photographs show only localised bleaching but there is concern it has come so early in the season

Warm water has already begun bleaching coral on the Great Barrier Reef, weeks ahead of the period with highest forecast risk. Satellite data suggest widespread bleaching is possible by March.

Selina Ward, a coral reef biologist from the University of Queensland, has photographed the bleaching, which she said appeared to be very localised so far, but was concerning because of how early in the season it was.

Among others, one is more likely to die from a bicycle accident, lightning strike, mauling by alligator or bear, than by a shark attack

The president of the United States does not like sharks.

Related: Stormy Daniels on Trump: pajamas, unprotected sex and … scary sharks

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Icelandic horses, an endangered hawksbill sea turtle and snow leopards are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Cross-party group of 200 MPs have written to the major supermarkets, as pressure grows over the huge amounts of plastic waste they generate

Two hundred cross-party MPs are calling on heads of the major supermarkets to eliminate plastic packaging from their products by 2023.

The MPs, who are from seven political parties, have written to Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, Waitrose, Aldi, Lidl, Budgens and Marks & Spencer urging them to scrap plastic packaging.

Defra prioritises post-Brexit fisheries plan and protection of UK’s coldwater reefs, promising data will be made publicly available online

An assessment of the seas around the UK will carried out by the government and made available online, the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has promised, with a view to cleaning up and improving the inshore environment.

Thérèse Coffey, a Defra minister, said that by the end of this year “a major assessment of how our seas have moved towards good environmental status” would be completed. This assessment, which would be accompanied by an online tool that the general public could use to examine progress on the marine environment and the pressures it is under, is expected to inform future marine policy.

Last-minute opposition by Westminster city council to park gate closures could leave the new superhighway ‘dead’, says former London cycling commissioner

Plans to close the outer circle of Regent’s Park to rat-running motor traffic are being “significantly watered down” to shutting just two gates – down from four – and to shorter periods, in only the morning and evening peak, it has been revealed.

Although still in discussion, plans for the road, which will form part of cycle superhighway 11 (CS11), have reportedly been under pressure from Westminster city council since they gained 60% approval in a public consultation in August 2016. Those close to discussions say weakened changes are now being blocked by the body that runs the park’s roads on the grounds they could be more dangerous than the status quo.

The killing of two rangers in Catalonia, a year ago this week, marked a chilling turning point for colleagues facing up to increasing violence towards Europe’s wildlife defenders

On a hill above the olive trees and dun scrublands of western Catalonia, two rusty iron silhouettes maintain a still and silent vigil. One peers out over the land through a pair of binoculars; the other kneels and holds a bird forever on the cusp of release.

At their feet is a simple plaque: “In memory and recognition of Xavier Ribes Villas and David Iglesias Díez, wildlife rangers whose lives were taken in the line of duty on 21 January 2017.”

EU criticised for its ‘poor response’ after an indigenous herder is killed during a forced eviction for a water conservation project it funds

The European Union has been accused of a fatally slow response to human rights warnings after the killing of an indigenous man at one of the projects it funds in Kenya.

Erik Solheim cites ‘huge decline’ in world’s reefs but says shift from coal and new awareness of plastic pollution are good news

The battle to save the world’s coral reefs is at “make or break point”, and countries that host them have a special responsibility to take a leadership role by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, plastic pollution and impacts from agriculture, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has said.

Speaking to the Guardian after the launch of International Coral Reef Initiative’s international year of the reef, Erik Solheim said he expected governments to take their efforts on reef protection in 2018 beyond symbolic designation.

Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Conservationists are using hidden cameras, DNA testing and a sense of smell, to follow the lives of the city’s otter population

A dank winter’s day in the Steel City did not hold obvious promise of the transformative power of nature. But not far from where a gaggle of office workers were enjoying a fag break, a friendly conservation volunteer called Paul ushered me down a ladder to an otherwise inaccessible spot on the banks of the river Don. I found myself, like Alice down the rabbit-hole, in a new sort of country, a lush carpet of floating weeds and a swift-moving ribbon of clear water at my feet muffling the sound of traffic and freshening the air.

Paul and his colleague Karon were checking hidden cameras for a lottery-funded survey of Sheffield’s small otter population, called Otterly Amazing! The motion-sensitive cameras have captured these shy creatures, hunting successfully in a river so polluted when I was a boy in the 1970s that it would literally catch fire.

Modern cars can start in the cold, so why are manufacturers failing to make exhaust controls more efficient below 20C?

Twenty-five years ago, starting a car in winter required careful balancing of choke and accelerator and sometimes sprays of WD40 or a bump start. Now, modern vehicles simply work in the cold. However, a European parliament inquiry following the Volkswagen scandal found that the nitrogen oxides abatement systems on many diesel cars shut down below the official test temperature of 20C. Manufacturers say that this prevents engine damage and is therefore legal. Real-world driving measurements on 9,000 cars in Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown this shutdown in action. Average emissions at 10C were almost twice those at 25C.

Related: What is behind the diesel cars emissions scandal?

Data shows the year was also one of the hottest three ever recorded, with scientists warning that the ‘climate tide is rising fast’

2017 was the hottest year since global records began that was not given an additional boost by the natural climate cycle El Niño, according to new data. Even without an El Niño, the year was still exceptionally hot, being one of the top three ever recorded.

The three main global temperature records show the global surface temperature in 2017 was 1C above levels seen in pre-industrial times, with scientists certain that humanity’s fossil fuel-burning is to blame.

Leading UK retailers say information is too ‘commercially sensitive’ to reveal, following Guardian report they make almost 1m tonnes a year

• Nearly 1m tonnes every year: supermarkets shamed for plastic packaging
  

Supermarkets are coming under growing pressure from politicians and campaigners to reveal the amount of plastic they create, and pay more towards its safe disposal, following a Guardian investigation.

Amid mounting concern about the devastating environmental impact of plastic pollution around the globe, the Guardian revealed on Wednesday that the UK’s leading supermarkets create almost 1m tonnes of plastic packaging waste every year.

Scientists say consumers should be wary of buying any seafood that may have passed through the area until the toxic impact of the spill has been assessed

Consumers in Japan, China and South Korea should be wary of buying seafood until governments in the region have monitored and released details about the toxic impact of the Sanchi oil spill, scientists have warned.

The worst oil ship disaster in decades has so far produced two visible plumes covering almost 100 square kilometres on the surface of the East China Sea, but maritime disaster experts say this is just the tip of the iceberg and millions of fish are likely to have been contaminated by carcinogens.

UNSW scientist died in December, age 60, from malignant melanoma

Australia’s scientific community has paid tribute to Prof Stuart Wenham, a solar energy pioneer described as the “Einstein of the solar industry”, whose research increased the efficiency of solar cells a hundredfold.

Wenham passed away on 23 December, age 60, after suffering from malignant melanoma. He was the director of the centre of excellence for advanced photovoltaics and photonics at the University of New South Wales.

The biggest impact comes from electricity used to power the microwaves, but study also highlights rising environmental cost of our throwaway culture

Popping frozen peas into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, but Europe’s stock of these quick-cook ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7m cars, a new study has found.

And the problem is growing: with costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing away microwaves after an average of eight years, pushing rising sales.