Recognizing Kyla Guerrero for Her Impressive Gold Award Project

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Ms. BYNUM. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the impressive efforts of Kyla Guerrero, a constituent of mine from Bend, Oregon. Kyla has used her Gold Award Girl Scout project to tackle the issue of food waste, taking leftover food and repurposing it to sustain a local farm. I am truly impressed by her innovation and hard work. This creative compost system keeps our community eco-friendly and helps protect our planet for future generations. I thank and congratulate Kyla. I include in the Record this article from the Central Oregon Daily written by Jakob Salao that details Kyla's hard work:

BEND, Ore.--More than one-third of all available food in the country goes to waste, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A Central Oregon Girl Scout is hoping to change that by taking that waste and using it to sustain a local farm. ``I've always had a passion for supporting environmental efforts and I feel like this was a way I could create a project that suits those passions,'' Girl Scout Kyla Guerrero said. ``And working with a local farm has been super fun.'' Guerrero is one of two local Girl Scouts working on a Gold Award Project. She's partnered with Around the Bend Farms to get youth involved and make farming a little more eco-friendly.

``We're creating this food scrap to compost system where the food scrap waste from the Bethlehem Inn kitchen gets delivered here and turned into compost which is used for the farm's agriculture,'' Guerrero said. Those food scraps contain vital nutrients for vegetables that would otherwise rot away in a landfill. ``By throwing those nutrients into a compost pile and into that kind of system, we can re-collect the nutrients and re-integrate it into our soil to rebuild that cycle,'' Urban Farm Manager Josh Lesko said. ``Then, our plants are just re-feeding themselves and feeding us more in the future.''

The compost system also helps keep the farm eco-friendly. ``We're lowering the amount of costs we're putting in,'' Lesko said. ``We're lowering the amount of transportation for things we need to pick up. We're letting the natural cycle do its thing and kind of working alongside it.'' But for Guerrero, it's starting to plant the seeds for the next generation. ``It's a great opportunity to have high school students come out and share this with their friends and be like `oh there's a farm here and we can all help together.' I really like that aspect of it,'' Guerrero said.

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