Since launching her awareness campaign in April, Espinosa has exceeded her goal of 500 pledges to over 600 people pledging to stop using single-use plastic straws. Recently, the sixth-grade student was able to get the Newport Mesa Unified School District in California to agree to remove plastic straws from the cutlery packets that come with lunches in the school cafeterias. This decision impacts a total of 30 schools and will be implemented at the start of the new school year.

Chloe Mei Espinosa, a sixth-grade student in California is campaigning against the use of single-use plastic straws. She's on a mission to bring awareness, and you can help her achieve this goal by signing her pledge.

"I live near the ocean and participate in beach cleanups with my family," says Espinosa, an avid scuba diver and nature lover. "On these cleanups, the majority of trash we collect is single-use plastics like bottles, bottle caps and plastic straws."

Her campaign is part of a sixth-grade Passion Project where students get to choose a topic they are passionate about — all while meeting deadlines and working within a timeline that helps them to develop their own learning styles.

For Espinosa, her timeline includes receiving 500 signatures on this pledge. Once she has achieved that, her plan is to create a flyer to start distributing at local chain restaurants to see if they would consider using straws on a request-only basis.

Besides signing the pledge, you can support this cause by refusing plastic straws yourself. The next time you are in a restaurant, join Chloe Mei in saying "no straw needed, thanks."

Facts About Plastic Straws
• 500 million straws are used in the U.S. everyday
• Disposable straws are not recyclable, which means they often end up in landfills — or worse, the ocean
• Each person in the U.S. will use approximately 38,000 or more straws between the ages of 5 and 65