Golf isn’t generally considered a very dangerous sport. In fact, it can be pretty darn leisurely. Golfers love to hit the greens on a beautiful day and enjoy time socializing, maybe doing a little business, and sinking a putt or two. Some of the most beautiful golf courses in the United States are in the South. The weather is perfect for year-round golfing, and many head that way for vacation, so it’s a win/win. The South is also home to some animals that you really don’t want to bug, like gators. A dad and his son were playing golf at St. Petersburg Country Club when they saw a huge alligator. They decided to stay in their cart, but not before capturing a pretty amazing video. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lynn Anderson Essick (@lynnandersonessick) The Alligator is Famous at the Golf Course The video went viral on Instagram, and for good reason: the golf course alligator is positively gigantic. “This big guy is very intimidating!! I’ve seen him before on the course resting by the water and you definitely don’t want to hit your ball in his direction. It’s currently breeding season and he is out and about looking for a girlfriend, the video’s caption reads. Seeing the alligator on the golf course stunned some people. “I literally cannot process that this is just a thing that happens in Florida,” a comment reads. “Omg I wouldn’t be watching and filming, so scary,” someone else added. And this apparently wasn’t just a one-time thing. St. Petersburg Country Club entered the chat and introduced the world to Gary. “Just remember SPCC that we knew Gary before the fame. Ever since SPORTS CENTER noticed him, Gary’s been different. He used to focus on golfers at hole 7…now he’s only focused on brand partnerships,” the country club joked. “Looks like Gary’s going to need a bigger pond.” This story’s featured image can be found here

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM This is part two of our Earth Prize 2026 coverage. Part one covered four regional winners from Ireland, Kenya, Gaza, and India, including Tala and Farah Mousa, whose Build Hope Palestine project we first wrote about earlier this month. Here are the remaining three. Thailand: nests for hornbills, and a reason for communities to protect them Proud inspecting the artificial nests made from upcycled plastic bottles. Yanin Tangkaravakoon is 17 and goes by Proud. She first saw hornbills on a school field trip to Khao Yai National Park and was captivated by them. Years later, she learned that 51 of the world’s 62 hornbill species were in decline due to deforestation, habitat loss, and poaching, and was inspired to spend years working with the Thailand Hornbill Research Foundation to figure out what she could do. Hornbills are critical seed dispersers, which means their movement through forests determines where trees grow and regenerate. Lose them and the forest changes with them, quietly and permanently. Proud’s project, Homes for Hornbills, runs on three tracks: artificial nests built from upcycled plastic bottles and shaped to hornbill nesting requirements; a school-based conservation programme; and income alternatives for local communities to reduce the financial pull toward poaching. Twenty nests have been installed in southern Thailand. Fourteen hornbill chicks fledged in 2025; 14 nests are now occupied. Proud also produced a documentary about the project, which is streaming on Thai PBS. “Seeing how important hornbills are to forests made me realise how urgent it is to protect them,” she said. “Winning the Earth Prize gives me the chance to expand nest deployment and partner with local communities to create long-term solutions for both wildlife and the forests they sustain.” Puerto Rico: flip-flops from a beach problem Helena do Rego in the lab, photo by Gabriela Bolinaga. Helena do Rego, 17, has watched sargassum seaweed pile up on Puerto Rico’s beaches for years. The smell is strong, the shorelines become unusable, and the seaweed just keeps coming. In 2025 alone, more than 40 million metric tons washed ashore across the region. Puerto Rico’s landfills are already at 85 percent capacity, taking in around 250 million pounds of textile waste a year with only nine to 12 percent recycled. Helena’s solution, SargaTex PR, turns excess sargassum into a biofabric for short-use items: flip-flops, beach footwear, spa products. Early prototypes, made with cranberry juice and coffee grounds among other local materials, biodegrade within weeks. The sargassum that overwhelms the beach becomes the material that replaces something worse. With her prize funding, Helena plans to develop the fabric through university labs, scale collection with local organisation Scuba Dogs, and pursue partnerships with beach shops and tourism businesses. “Seeing how sargassum was taking over our beaches made me realise how urgent the problem had become,” she said. “This gives me the chance to scale a solution that turns waste into materials that are better for both people and the planet.” Brazil: a bandage from aloe and chamomile that breaks down in 48 hours HADA – demonstration of the testing phase and prototype creation. Bernardo Renner and Ísís Valentin both play volleyball. Anyone who plays this sport will know that cuts and scrapes happen regularly; the treatment was always a basic bandage that covered the wound and didn’t do much else. They started wondering why no one has improved on this yet. Their solution, HADA, is a biodegradable dressing made from aloe vera and chamomile, both of which have well-documented antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and tissue-regenerating properties. It promotes healing and breaks down in soil within 48 hours. An estimated 2.2 billion plastic bandages were discarded in 2023 alone. They covered wounds without helping them heal, and left microplastic waste behind. Bernardo and Ísís have produced four research papers, developed working prototypes, and partnered with Instituto Caldeira, one of southern Brazil’s largest innovation hubs. Their prize funding is going toward regulatory approvals and deployment in schools, sports centres, and healthcare settings. “Something as small as a bandage is used by millions of people every day, yet it creates waste and doesn’t always support healing,” they said. “Winning The Earth Prize gives us the chance to bring HADA into real-world use.” Cast your vote There will be seven regional winners and one global winner decided by public vote, closing May 29. You can vote now on the Earth Prize website. The competition is now in its fifth year, founded during the 2019 School Strike for Climate by The Earth Foundation. Since then, it has reached more than 21,000 students across 169 countries and distributed more than $500,000 in prize funding.       Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Earth Prize 2026 part II: seaweed fabric, hornbill nests, and a healing bandage first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Every year, The Earth Prize asks teenagers across the world the same question: what environmental problem would you solve, and how? Every year, the answers come from young people who live closest to the problem. After five years and more than 21,000 students across 169 countries, that’s less a pattern than a design principle. The people who know the problem best tend to build the best fix. This year, seven regional winners share $100,000 in prize funding, each team receiving $12,500 to develop their idea into something deployable. A global winner will be chosen by public vote on May 29. Here are four of them (including one team we’ve already introduced). Ireland: a plastic that cleans up after other plastics 3 phases of biodegradation in soil, which releases the enzyme into the environment and further breaks down microplastics. Arya Satheesh, 18, hit a basic limitation while monitoring water quality: she could detect microplastics in the water, but there was nothing to take them out. That gap became her project. Eco Purge is a plant-based plastic embedded with enzymes that release gradually as the material breaks down. As those enzymes spread into the surrounding environment, they continue degrading other microplastics in soil, fresh water, and salt water. Most solutions try to prevent plastic from entering the environment in the first place. Eco Purge is designed for what’s already there. Arya has collaborated with researchers at University College Dublin, ATU Letterkenny, and BiOrbic Bioeconomy Research Centre, and plans to scale the technology toward packaging and compost bags. “Plastic pollution doesn’t just disappear, it breaks into tiny pieces that stay in our environment,” Arya said. “This is just the beginning.” Kenya: an exhaust filter built from maize, coconut shells, and algae   3D-prototype model. For Fredrick Njoroge Kariuki, this wasn’t an engineering problem first. It was a health problem. He has bronchitis, and growing up in Naivasha, the air pollution around him made it worse. He and Miron Onsarigo, both 17, built HewaSafi (Swahili for “clean air”), a multi-stage vehicle exhaust filter made from maize cobs, coconut shells, agricultural waste, disposed batteries, and algae. It captures more than 90 percent of particulate matter and reduces both CO2 and carbon monoxide emissions. The design targets matatus (shared minibuses) and boda bodas (motorcycle taxis), the vehicles that carry most people in African cities and account for a significant share of urban air pollution. It’s also cheap to make and genuinely hard to steal. Conventional exhaust systems get stripped for their valuable components; HewaSafi’s materials have no street value. “I didn’t choose this problem, it chose me,” Fredrick said. Miron added, “Back home in Kisumu, seeing people get sick from vehicle fumes was just normal. But normal didn’t feel right to me.” The team has completed pilot tests with a local matatu association and is building a product family with installment payment options so drivers can afford it. Gaza: rubble into bricks Prototype of the bricks. We covered Tala and Farah Mousa earlier this month, when their project had earned them a spot among the top 35 Earth Prize finalists. They’ve since been named the Middle East regional winners — the first from Palestine in the competition’s five-year history. Build Hope Palestine processes debris from damaged buildings into non-load-bearing blocks for garden beds, pavements, and partitions. The method is designed to work anywhere: crush and sieve rubble, mix with locally available binders like clay, ash, or glass powder, mould, and dry. No heavy machinery, no specialised infrastructure. Their next goal is to bring 100 young people into hands-on workshops, producing at least 200 blocks and equipping participants to teach the process onward. “The view from our tent window is what keeps us motivated,” Tala said. “It’s designed to be replicated by communities without heavy machinery or specialised infrastructure, and turn what was once destruction into a starting point for hope.” India: tamarind powder that pulls microplastics out with a magnet   Demonstration – Adding the tamarind-based powder to water (dyed green for visibility). Vivaan Chhawchharia, Ariana Agarwal, and Avyana Mehta, all 16, came up with their idea after visiting a rural community and watching a child drink from a shared container with no filtration. More than 2.2 billion people globally lack access to safely managed drinking water and rely on exactly these kinds of containers. Plas-Stick is a biodegradable powder made from waste tamarind seeds. Added to water, it attracts microplastics and clumps them into visible masses that can be pulled out with a handheld magnet. No electricity required. The team has already reached more than 8,000 students and teachers and worked with researchers at IIT Guwahati. Their prize funding goes toward decentralized production hubs across rural India. “Plas-Stick was designed to be simple, affordable and accessible,” the team said. “This support allows us to take it beyond pilot schools and scale it to many more communities that need it most.” Part II covers the three remaining regional winners from Oceania and Southeast Asia, North America, and Central and South America.   Did this solution stand out? Share it with a friend or support our mission by becoming an Emissary.The post Earth Prize 2026 part I: teenage teams tackling big global problems  first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

George Washington became the first President of the United States on April 30, 1789. Born in 1732, he was raised in Virginia and dedicated to the formation of the United States of America (after previously being called the ‘United Colonies‘.) Both his military and political service led to Washington developing many deep friendships throughout his life. He died at his Mount Vernon estate in 1799. “Among his friends, Washington also showed a capacity for intimacy and playfulness that was largely absent from his public persona as Commander-and-Chief and later president,” noted Cassandra Good, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History Marymount University. Washington offered his wisdom on developing and maintaining friendships in his personal letters. George Washington’s friendship advice Washington had a large family and often shared his sage life experience with his many nieces and nephews. In the early 1780s, his nephew Bushrod Washington was studying law in Philadelphia. He would go on to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and inherited Mount Vernon (Washington’s famed estate in Virginia) after his uncle’s death. Washington offered his wisdom on friendship to his nephew Bushrod Washington in a letter dated January 15, 1783: “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence—true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo & withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.” George Washington’s friendships Washington friendships were described as “selective, but often long-lasting, loyal, and integral to his public life.” In a letter dated June 15, 1790 to David Stuart (a man who became Washington’s close friend after he married his step-daughter-in-law), he wrote:  “I can truly say I had rather be at Mount Vernon with a friend or two about me, than to be attended at the Seat of Government by the Officers of State and the Representatives of every Power in Europe… “ Washington gained friends through many outlets, including his Virginia social circle and his military service in the Revolutionary War. During the American Revolution, Washington met and became close friends with General Henry Knox, who would become Secretary of State. The two maintained a 25-year friendship, and Washington wrote of Knox: “there is no man in the United States with whom I have been in habits of greater intimacy, no one whom I have loved more sincerely, nor any for whom I have had a greater friendship.” Washington’s friendship with Thomas Jefferson One of Washington’s most notable friendships was with fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. According to author Francis D. Cogliano’s book A Revolutionary Friendship (published by Harvard University Press), the two were friends for 30 years. Washington seemed to take his own advice on friendship when it came to Jefferson. They bonded over their love of theater, agriculture and architecture. “Their relationship evolved slowly, but they became close friends,” Cogliano wrote. “Each respected the other’s qualities, and they worked productively together for twenty years.” Unfortunately, the two would become estranged in 1797 after a letter Jefferson wrote a friend with “unflattering references to Washington” was ultimately published in Europe and America. The post George Washington offered wise advice on why friendships should develop like ‘a plant of slow growth’ appeared first on Upworthy.

Picture this: A city neighborhood has exploded in population, from a few hundred people to more than 3,000 residents in just a few years. With a new $450 million soccer stadium being built nearby, experts expect that population to rise to more than 9,000. And yet, there are glaring gaps in the community. With no neighborhood school, library, or community center, people have few local public spaces to gather. And with a stark lack of grocery stores and restaurants, residents have found themselves living in a “food desert.” The nonprofit Alchemist Community Development Corporation has its finger on the pulse of this emerging neighborhood in Sacramento, California’s historically industrial River District. It also has an innovative solution to fill many of those glaring gaps: Alchemist Public Market (APM). Artist’s rendering of the front of Alchemist Public Market. Photo courtesy of Alchemist CDC A vibrant public space that serves as an incubator for new food businesses The first-of-its-kind public market will include a corner store that accepts WIC and CalFresh (California’s SNAP benefits program) and sells grocery staples and products from local makers. People will be able to connect at the market’s eating areas, co-working space, inclusive playground, and weekly farmers market. But APM will also provide opportunities for up-and-coming food entrepreneurs. The space will be home to eight small incubator restaurants in a shared food court, as well as a shared-use commissary kitchen that can support dozens of independent food vendors. Shannin Stein, Alchemist’s director of advancement, tells Upworthy that one goal of the market is to make sure people living and working in the neighborhood aren’t left out of the economic conversation as hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in the surrounding area. That goal aligns with Alchemist CDC’s long-time support of food entrepreneurs from underserved populations. Helping food entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground Alchemist CDC has multiple programs that help support burgeoning food businesses, and APM will serve as an extension of that support. Nikki Gaddis-Chester, owner of Jerk Street Tacos, has been part of the Alchemist Kitchen Incubator Program (AKIP) for the past two years and looks forward to having a space at APM. She tells Upworthy that mentorship from Alchemist has “significantly transformed” her business journey. “This vibrant community has not only supported the growth of our small mobile food business, but has also equipped us with essential tools for developing and sustaining our menu,” she said. View this post on Instagram Jessica Brown, founder of Latin Caribbean culinary brand Caribe Azul, tells Upworthy that APM will be “a powerful opportunity for entrepreneurs who have the creativity, culinary experience, and drive to start a business but may not yet have the structure, knowledge, or support to build a strong foundation.” Brown has participated in Alchemist CDC’s Microenterprise Academy program, a 12-week training course for starting a food business. “I came into the program with a clear concept for my Latin Caribbean cuisine, but building a business can feel isolating when you are managing so many parts on your own, from operations to marketing and promotion,” she said. “What I experienced through Alchemist felt like opening a gate to a portal I did not realize I had access to, but that was always there. It helped me recognize the strengths I already had while giving me the structure to apply them with confidence.” An all-electric campus that fosters community around food The APM project aims to connect people to local agriculture and food businesses while also meeting the goal of environmental sustainability. “APM is being built as a state-of-the-art, all-electric, sustainably designed campus that reflects Sacramento’s leadership in environmental innovation, investment in local food systems, and community-centered economic development,” Stein said. “We want this to be a place where neighborhood residents, visitors to Sacramento, and anyone who loves food and community feel welcome and connected.” View this post on Instagram So-called “third places,” where people can meet up outside of home or work, play an important role in building community culture. Sam Greenlee, CEO of Alchemist, describes how local residents will be able to use the space: “Alchemist Public Market will serve as a heart for this emerging community. At APM, people can walk over to buy their grocery staples, and that includes people who depend on EBT and WIC nutrition benefits. Community elders can read the paper and chat over a great cup of coffee. Parents of young kids can meet up to enjoy delicious food while their kids have fun in the play area. Co-workers can go out to lunch and find enough variety to make everyone happy. Teens can come by after school, get a snack, and check out ping pong paddles or a basketball to play in the park next door. Families can meet their neighbors at the weekly farmers’ market, listen to local musicians during dinner, and celebrate after Sacramento Republic FC matches.” A community gathering space that serves as an engine of economic growth Alchemist Public Market broke ground in April 2026 with bipartisan support and significant public funding secured. Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and Congresswoman Doris Matsui attended the groundbreaking. View this post on Instagram “Alchemist Public Market will drive economic growth, support public health, and transform a vacant space into a community center, increasing food access for the immediate neighborhood and fostering economic growth that will ripple across Sacramento,” McCarty told Upworthy. “We were proud to support Alchemist CDC’s Farmers’ Market access program and look forward to this all-electric market.” Greenlee concurs on the importance of the market as a driver of the local economy. “APM is going to be an economic development engine at the heart of our region for decades to come,” he said, “launching new businesses that represent the diversity of our communities, filling vacant storefronts, hiring neighbors, paying local taxes, and altogether making Sacramento a more vibrant place to live.” The challenges of nonprofit projects in tough economic times Of course, like most nonprofit organizations, Alchemist has had to play whack-a-mole with challenges since the market’s inception. The economic woes we’ve all experienced in recent years have taken a toll on the project and its organizers as they navigate the ever-evolving world of government funding, manage cash flow timing, and deal with dramatic increases in building material costs. View this post on Instagram “Community-based organizations are often expected to solve deeply complex social and economic challenges, but without the same incentives, flexibility, or financial backing commonly available to traditional for-profit development projects,” Stein said. “It can create a difficult dynamic where nonprofits are asked to prove success long before receiving the level of investment needed to fully realize that success.” Though construction has already begun, the project faces an immediate need for a bridge loan to move forward as red tape ties up funding disbursements. However, Alchemist is determined to bring the market and all it has to offer to life. “This project’s existence is the story of numerous almost-insurmountable challenges, and the tenacity to find a way through each one,” Greenlee said. “Early on, many people understandably thought the project was a bit pie in the sky; a great idea that seemed unlikely to become reality. As a non-profit, we have always faced challenges funding the next step of the project…But at every step in the process, we have demonstrated our commitment to see this project through, and we have found people stepping up to help us through each and every obstacle.”  You can find updates on Alchemist Public Market here and learn more about what Alchemist CDC does here. The post A Sacramento ‘food desert’ is getting a transformative, first-of-its-kind public market appeared first on Upworthy.