ReGen Monterey

to when ReGen Monterey received four statewide awards from the California Association of Public Information Officials, the state’s premier association for government communications professionals.

The Excellence in Public Information and Communications (EPIC) Awards were presented on May 12 and recognize outstanding government communications work across dozens of categories, including websites, video, graphic design, events, campaigns, publications, social media and more. Over 500 entries were submitted.

🏆 Best in Show – Sort with Heart

🏆 EPIC Award for Communications Campaign – Sort with Heart

🏆 Award of Distinction for Public Service Announcement – Sort with Heart

🏆 Certificate of Excellence for Communications Campaign – Charged Conversations

Our feed typically highlights the work of our operations employees who keep ReGen Monterey running every day. Today, we’re putting the spotlight on the communications team.

Congratulations to Director of Communications Zoë Shoats, Communications Manager Kristin O’Hara and Senior Communications Coordinator Eric Palmer, whose work was recognized for campaigns promoting curbside organics participation and battery fire safety awareness.

If you’ve ever visited our website, followed us on social media, received a mailer, attended a community event, taken a facility tour or seen one of our educational campaigns, this is the team behind much of that work. Their goal is simple: help residents stay informed, recycle right, understand the public services available to them and support environmental protection in our community. We are proud to be recognized for communications that help our community understand and respond to some of the industry’s most pressing challenges, including organics recycling participation and battery fire prevention.

⭐ BEST IN SHOW! ⭐

ReGen Monterey, Salinas Valley Recycles - SVSWA and Blue Strike Environmental are proud to celebrate the success of Sort with Heart, our award-winning organics recycling education campaign.

In addition to earning Best in Show at the 2026 California Association of Public Information Officials Excellence in Public Information and Communications (EPIC) Awards, the campaign also received an EPIC Award for Communications Campaign and an Award of Distinction for Public Service Announcement.

Sort with Heart was made possible through CalRecycle’s Local Assistance Grant Program, which invests in local efforts to increase participation in organics recycling programs that help reduce food waste and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Supporting California’s SB 1383 goals, the campaign encouraged residents to see food scrap recycling as a familiar, easy and culturally rooted practice. Through bilingual outreach, public art, storytelling and media campaigns, Sort with Heart showed how everyday habits around preparing and sharing food can extend naturally to composting food scraps in the green cart.

Thank you to CalRecycle for helping make this work possible and to the many partners, artists, filmmakers, community leaders, member jurisdictions and organizations who contributed their creativity, expertise and support along the way, and to our communications peers who recognized the value of this work.

“The most environmentally friendly product is the one you didn’t buy.” —
🌎♻️🌏

A Materials Recovery Facility maintenance worker navigates a scissor lift through a canyon of mixed recyclables at ReGen Monterey. Hard to believe all of this commingled material — 250 tons a day! — will travel through a mile of conveyors and emerge as clean, sorted bales of single materials. None of it happens without the talented maintenance teams who keep this complex system running around the clock.

Like a brushstroke across a canvas, a Scraper carves its signature into the earth at ReGen Monterey’s landfill. Its blade cuts into the hillside, filling its bowl with sand that will be hauled and spread as daily cover by sundown, keeping trash grounded and out of the air. On , we celebrate the operators and mechanics of ReGen Monterey whose skill keep these versatile machines, and this essential work, moving.