In memoriam: Henry “Hank” Render

Henry “Hank” Render, who in 1983 co-founded the former Maine Plastics of Zion, Illinois, with his son Robert Render and with Gene Cohen, died Saturday, Nov. 3, at the age of 87. He was born Nov. 2, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York.

Robert describes his father as “a recycling visionary” who “saw the trend of metal packaging and other products transitioning to plastics in the early 1980s.”

At its height, Maine Plastics employed more than 300 people and processed more than 170 million pounds annually. The company, which closed in early 2014, offered recycling solutions for companies that generate postindustrial and postcommercial plastics. Its services also included toll processing, grinding, sorting and color separation of commodity and engineering-grade plastics; metal and paper recycling; and certified destruction.

Robert says Hank worked as a painting contractor until 1968, when he decided there was no real future in that business. At that point, Hank entered the scrap metal business with a boyhood friend in Des Plaines, Illinois, forming Maine Scrap Metal Inc.

He met plastics recycler Stanley Gershon on the golf course in 1982, Robert says, and by the 18th hole, the men had a business plan for a plastics recycling company. Hank ran Maine Plastics until 1994.

Hank is survived by his wife, Barbara; four children, Marc (Ellie) Render, Ellen (Julian) Sims, Robert (Deborah) Render and Renee (David) Kaplan; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.