12-year-old Chloe Mei Espinosa of Newport Beach, California, loves the ocean and the animals in it. The determined young activist started a campaign to “Skip The Plastic Straw,” in an effort to help keep our oceans free of trash that can hurt marine life. The campaign started as a sixth-grade “passion project” for Chloe, and now it has its own website where people can take a “Skip the Plastic Straw” pledge. Her efforts have been so successful that she has well passed her goal of 500 pledges and even her school district (consisting of 32 schools)is on board and has completely ditched single-use plastic straws! According to NBC Los Angeles, the Newport Mesa Unified School District had been going through 10,000 plastic straws per day, but will now eliminate them completely by January. Espinosa was delighted when her school district agreed to end their use of the plastic straw, which was also partly due to the help of the nutrition services director of her school district, Mrs. Ellis. “It felt like the ocean was giving me a huge hug, saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping me,’” she says. Espinosa was inspired to start the campaign after […]