Laid off from Evergreen Recycling.

What Evergreen Recycling layoffs have meant for employees

Where you worked decides which document describes your layoff. The Clyde and Albany cuts come from one letter Evergreen wrote to Ohio, which said the closings were expected to be permanent and that every facility would close in its entirety, while the Riverside cut came about a year earlier under a notice in California's WARN report. The letter's figure of about 247 covers all of Evergreen's work sites, so it runs 25 higher than the Clyde and Albany counts put together. The count for your own plant is the better measure of what happened there.

Evergreen was looking for a buyer when, according to its letter, the lender swept its cash. The letter says several bidders had already done their diligence and at least one was expected to send a non-binding letter of intent that week, and that Evergreen had been trying to sell itself as a going concern and failed. If you heard talk of bidders before the end, the letter bears that out. It's the company's version, written to the state, and it puts the end on the lender.

If you were at Clyde, the letter's list of affected positions puts 101 in operations, 21 in maintenance and 15 in quality, and it also takes in accounting, human resources, IT and safety jobs, so the office went along with production. The letter said that with no union at the plant, bumping rights couldn't be exercised. Its schedule left room for a smaller group to stay on after February 24, with April 24 as the last date it gave for any layoff. Ohio's weekly amounts and filing steps are on Ohio unemployment benefits.

Albany's paperwork carries another name. The New York filing for that plant is under Ultrepet, LLC, doing business as Evergreen Recycling, in our WARN tracker, so both names on it belong to one employer, and the Ohio letter separately names Evergreen's Albany facility on Fuller Road. The Albany count comes from that New York notice; the Ohio letter breaks out Clyde alone. The letter also said the union at the New York plant had been notified. What New York pays, and how, is on New York unemployment benefits.

Riverside ran on a slower clock, with about two months between the notice and its effective date in California's report. The company told Plastics News, in Waste Dive's telling, that those layoffs were "not taken lightly" and were a "strategic decision" meant to make the plant more efficient. After Blue Polymers bought the plant's assets, according to Channel Prime Alliance, Republic Services' Pete Keller told Packaging Dive that its previous owners had converted it to make pellets from flake rather than from bales. That California notice covered the Riverside layoffs, and if you were among them, California unemployment benefits covers that state's payments and filing.

Evergreen was backed by private equity firm The Sterling Group. It bought the Riverside plant in 2021 from CarbonLite, which had filed for Chapter 11, and it also ran plants in Ohio, New York and Nova Scotia. In 2022 the firm announced it would invest $200 million in upgrades across those locations, Waste Dive reported. If paperwork from Evergreen reached you after the closings were announced, it's worth keeping it with the Ohio letter, the company's own dated account of the closings and their schedule. For a hiring manager asking why the job ended, that letter is a dated company document saying the plants were closing, and explaining a layoff covers how that conversation tends to go.

A sourced history of Evergreen Recycling layoffs

• February 2026, closing notice for the Clyde and Albany plants

  After its lender swept its cash, Evergreen gave notice of both closings in a February 24 letter to Ohio, putting job losses at about 247 across all sites, 163 at Clyde. New York's notice in our WARN tracker lists 59 at Albany.

• January 2025, Riverside sort and wash layoffs

  Evergreen filed notice of 57 permanent layoffs at Riverside, effective March 24, 2025, California's WARN report shows. It was closing the sort and wash department and keeping resin production, Waste Dive reported.

What to do if you're laid off from Evergreen Recycling

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Evergreen Recycling's biggest hubs: Ohio, New York, California. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Evergreen Recycling's hub states run: Ohio, New York, California, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.