"It started so innocently. A kid ordered a soda in a restaurant.

'It came with a plastic straw in it,' Milo Cress recalled. He glared at the straw for a while. 'It seemed like such a waste.'

Not only did Cress yank the plastic from his drink, but he also launched a campaign, 'Be Straw Free,' targeting all straws as needless pollution. He knocked on the doors of restaurants in Burlington, Vt., where he lived at the time, and asked managers not to offer straws unless patrons asked. He was 9 years old.

Today Cress, 15, is one of the faces of a growing movement to eliminate plastic straws. They have been found wedged in the nose of a sea turtle, littering the stomachs of countless dead marine animals and scattered across beaches with tons of other plastics."

Darryl Fears reports for the Washington Post June 24, 2017. [2]