This year's First Lego League competition had the theme of "Trash Trek" and two area teams are headed to national tournaments later this year. AOR promoted the competition last fall and the tournament and 15th annual Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League Championship Tournaments held over the weekend in Hillsboro.

Team "Epic Pineapples" researched how to keep food waste out of landfills and will head to the First Lego League World Festival to be held in St. Louis in April. “Our proudest moment was presenting a petition with over 2,000 signatures asking Washington County to start a composting service to eliminate food waste in landfills," team member Aashvi Busa said in a statement.

The title of Team KitKats 4.Awesome research project was “REFUSING Single-use Plastics.” Team member Kavya Ravishankar said, “I am most proud of ‘EcoMinder,’ a fully functional working prototype of a reminder system that we created to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics.”  Team KitKats4.Awesome will head to  an open competition at the LEGOLAND's California resort in May.

Click here to read the full article from the Beaverton Valley Times.