Wisdom Council
Chloe Mei (age 15) and Ella Lin Espinosa (13) are sisters and youth environmentalists who work closely together on a campaign founded by older sister Chloe Mei in 2018, called Skip the Plastic Straw (skiptheplasticstraw.com). They regularly present to youth at camps and schools about the harmful effects of plastic straws and plastic pollution. Through this campaign, Chloe Mei Espinosa has successfully convinced five school districts (245 schools) and two local hospitals in Orange County to eliminate 15 million plastic straws per year in their cafeterias. During the pandemic, the Espinosa sisters co-founded Skip the Plastic Straw’s “Sustainable Sisters” YouTube Channel, with the goal to reach out to people via another platform and to promote eco-friendly brands and sustainable living. Together, they have also organized two annual global cleanups with the organization Litterati, and have managed to get participants from around the world to pick up close to 19,000 pieces of trash in September 2020 and 2021. Chloe Mei has appeared on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” in an NBC-Los Angeles feature, as well as in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and has won numerous awards including Captain Planet Foundation’s Young Superhero for Earth award, Pacific Marine Mammal Center’s Junior Philanthropist Award, Oceana’s Ocean Hero Award, Orange County Top 100 Influencers (2018 & 2020), a Top 20 Finalist for Time/Nickelodeon’s Kid of the Year 2020, Diana Award, and Barron Prize honoree. Both sisters were featured on ABC news for their cleanup efforts on Giving Tuesday in December 2020, and a Spectrum News Los Angeles feature highlighted their work in raising awareness among campers at local community organizations in April 2022. They have also served as judges for the Redford Center Stories Film Challenge, in which they reviewed and judged environmental short stories produced by middle school children. Recently, they worked with NIKE to produce an Earth Day 2022 episode published on NIKE’s YouTube channel, which now has close to 2 million views! The Espinosa sisters, also known as the Sustainable Sisters of Skip the Plastic Straw, love working together to protect the planet and hope to inspire more people especially youths to do the same!