Laid off from Waste Management.

Previous rounds

Waste Management layoff history

If you were one of the 88 people Natura PCR laid off in Waller County, your last active day was Oct. 15, 2025, according to the WARN notice Chron reported on. The plant had opened in late 2024 at a reported cost of $150 million, less than a year before the company suspended operations. The job list ran from technicians and maintenance staff to engineers and lab technicians, and none of them were represented by a union. The notice kept everyone on full pay and benefits through Dec. 31, 2025, and called the layoffs permanent, even though the company said the plant wasn't fully shut down and might reopen if the market improved. Losing a job for good at a building that could come back on without you is its own particular kind of bad.

WM agreed in 2022 to take a controlling stake in Avangard Innovative's U.S. business, to run as Natura PCR starting at the Waller site, and Jim Fish, the chief executive, said the stake positioned WM "to grow and scale rapidly in the emerging PCR space." Natura PCR cited adverse market conditions and falling demand for recycled plastic in packaging. On the third-quarter 2025 call, chief sustainability officer Tara Hemmer said the plant made a pellet customers would buy, but with virgin plastic prices at all-time lows and some minimum-content laws delayed, "the buyers were just not there for the product that we were producing." WM's annual report records a $160 million impairment for 2025 on suspending a plastic film and wrap recycling business, and a $168 million goodwill charge in 2023 on one it describes the same way. Hemmer tied any restart to broader enforcement of recycled-content laws, and no reopening date is on record.

Waller stands out against the way WM's leadership has described its workforce reductions since 2022, as jobs left unfilled. In February 2022, Fish said 5,000 to 7,000 positions would go away through attrition between 2022 and 2026, and that April he said about 300 customer service openings would be automated rather than filled. In 2024 he called it a "low-impact" reduction, and WM estimated it would drop about 1,200 unfilled positions that year. The Elkridge, Maryland recycling plant WM said in September 2024 it was closing, to make way for a more automated plant across the street, put 66 roles on a WARN notice effective Nov. 16; the company said all of them were third-party temps and told their staffing agency the assignments would end. Full-time headcount went from about 61,700 at the close of 2024 to about 60,500 a year later, per the 2025 annual report, roughly 1,200 fewer by our arithmetic, and the filings don't say how many of those people were laid off.

Stericycle became part of WM on Nov. 4, 2024, when the $7.2 billion deal closed, and its regulated waste and secure information destruction work became WM's Healthcare Solutions segment. The integration shows up in the 2025 annual report as dollars without a headcount. WM booked $51 million of restructuring charges in 2025, up from $4 million in 2024, primarily employee costs from integrating Stericycle plus retention and severance tied to automating recycling plants and some back-office functions, and $31 million of it was counted among $120 million in Stericycle acquisition and integration costs. The filings name no sites, and our tracker holds no filing under the Stericycle name since the start of 2025. On the October 2025 call, Healthcare Solutions president Rafa Carrasco said WM had given some customers credits or deferred price increases over billing and reporting frustration tied to earlier ERP integrations.

For anyone WM let go in Texas, the Texas Workforce Commission sets out a few rules worth having in hand. The final paycheck after a layoff is due within six calendar days of the effective date, or on the next regular workday if that sixth day falls when the employer is normally closed. Under the Texas Payday Law, severance is owed only when a written policy promises it. TWC says wages in lieu of notice or severance won't cancel unemployment benefits but hold payments back until the period that pay covers has run out, while a severance payment you negotiated likely won't affect eligibility. TWC doesn't issue advisory opinions before a claim is filed, so the answer on your case comes after you file, and the Texas unemployment page walks through the claim. TWC takes requests for copies of specific WARN notices, which is how to check the Natura PCR dates against your own paperwork. When WM coverage stops, COBRA generally lets eligible workers temporarily continue qualifying group health coverage after a job loss, at a premium that can reach 102% of the plan's cost. The roughly 9,200 WM employees under a collective bargaining agreement have that contract to check as well. Natura's pay-through date came from one plant's notice, and nothing on record says another WM cut would copy it.

Reporting on previous Waste Management layoff rounds

• October 2025, Natura PCR plastics plant, Waller County, Texas · 88 jobs on the WARN notice, technicians to engineers; permanent, though the company said the plant wasn't fully shut down

  Full pay and benefits through Dec. 31, 2025, per the notice as Chron reported it.

• 2025, Stericycle integration and recycling automation · No headcount disclosed; $51 million in restructuring charges, primarily integration employee costs plus automation-related retention and severance

• November 2024, Elkridge, Maryland recycling plant · 66 temporary roles on the WARN notice, effective Nov. 16; WM said only staffing-agency temps were affected

What to do after being laid off from Waste Management

1. File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Waste Management's biggest hubs: Texas, Maryland. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
2. 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 Waste Management's hub states run: Texas, Maryland, and every other state is here.
3. 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.
4. Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
5. 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.