Biographical Information: Murray J. Fox
Since his discharge from the US Navy following World War II, Murray J. Fox has owned and developed numerous extremely profitable businesses. His initial project, Fox Engineering Company, was founded in Brooklyn, NY in 1945. Fox Engineering’s first major project was constructing automated car wash systems. This overwhelming engineering success was followed by innovative triumphs in smelting furnaces and casting equipment for the aluminum extrusion industry.
In 1952, Murray Fox co-founded the Triplex Aluminum Company of Brooklyn, NY to manufacture aluminum storm windows and doors. A 1968 U.S. Government mandate for use of safety glass in door applications presented new opportunities. A year later, seizing these opportunities, Mr. Fox liquidated Triplex, and he then entered into the manufacturing world of insulated and tempered safety glass by purchasing shares of Air Space Inc. of Worcester, Massachusetts.
By 1970, Murray Fox, along with several Air Space associates, had constructed a 60,000 square foot building for 30 employees in Webster, Massachusetts. This facility housed the newly founded Glass Guard Industries, Inc. Within five years, the exploding success of manufactured safety glass led to expansion of that facility to 170,000 square feet with 300 employees. One of the waste by-products of manufactured safety glass was broken glass (cullet). Unwilling to just dump this into the waste stream, Mr. Fox established additional markets for the recycling and reuse of these by-products. Glass Guard Industries was sold to Guardian Industries in 1974.
Mr. Fox’s next project started by gaining a controlling interest in Recycling Service Corporation in 1974 and changing its name to Recycling Enterprises, Inc. (REI). Murray Fox expanded this small, one-truck operation, into a business large enough to accommodate greater volumes of post-consumer glass. He tactically moved the business from its location in Worcester, MA to an industrial site in North Oxford, Massachusetts. At the new location, he created an automated system for cleaning and pulverizing the glass and began to collect waste glass using roll-off containers. REI thus became the first intermediate glass processing facility in the Northeast portion of the United States. By the fall of 1976, Recycling Enterprises was processing 1,800 tons of glass per month. This was a 1,500% increase over the 125 tons per month that was processed when Mr. Fox acquired the company just two short years before.
By 1978, REI outgrew the North Oxford location. Murray Fox then purchased eight acres of land in Oxford, MA. and constructed a 40,000 sq. ft. building complete with executive offices and two glass processing lines. By 1980, due to the additional glass collected from the Connecticut bottle deposit law, REI’s volume reached 3,200 tons per month. At that time, Mr. Fox bought the remaining shares of the company and became sole owner of Recycling Enterprises, Inc. Within a matter of months, REI expanded operations and opened its Berlin, New Jersey plant followed by a third facility in Hillside, northern New Jersey in October of 1981.
Utilizing his mechanical ability and vast experience, Mr. Fox, with his crew at Recycling Enterprises, engineered and manufactured the equipment used to construct all the recycling plants.
In July of 1982, shortly after the state of New York passed its bottle law, Murray Fox entered into a partnership with Simon Sinnreich forming REI Distributors, Inc., which specialized as a glass brokerage company. As an outgrowth of the glass brokerage activity, two additional ventures took shape. The first, Recycling Enterprises of New York, Inc. that housed two processing lines at a plant in Elmira, NY. The second, Distributors Recycling, Inc, which housed a 60,000 sq. ft. facility with three decasing and processing lines, storage tanks with a 270-ton capacity for cullet operations, can-counting machinery, three balers, and a re-casing line for reclaiming refillable bottles. This Newark, NJ facility became known as the largest intermediate processing facility in the U.S.
In 1991, REI Distributors, Inc., with annual sales of $16M, acquired and merged with a publicly traded company called Pure Tech International, which had annual sales of $3.5M. This combined venture subsequently acquired Plastic Specialties & Technologies Inc in 1995. Mr. Fox held positions as Officer and Director of the Corporation. In 1998, Tekni-Plex Corporation purchased the 22-plant worldwide Pure Tech International whose sales had grown to $345M annually.
Having moved from recycling aluminum to recycling glass (in the Triplex operations), followed by plastic beverage containers (REI and Pure Tech), and still very much a believer in recycling, Murray Fox next became involved with a special form of plastic recycling. He came upon a process which reclaims and reuses waste plastics of all kinds called I-ROCKâ, and acquired all patents of the process. The I-ROCKâ process, which co-mingles all seven types of waste stream plastics and cold extrudes them into new products, is now being processed at a plant in Brighton, Michigan. Mr. Fox currently holds the position of CEO and President of I-Rock® Industries, Inc., headquartered in Webster, Massachusetts..
Affiliations
National Recycling Coalition
Mr. Fox is one of the founding fathers and a charter member of the NRC. He has served as both vice president and a member of the board of directors. In 1994 Mr. Fox launched the RECYCLING TRUST FUND to promote education in the recycling field. He is currently a Life Member of the NRC and Honorary Director.
Iowa Recycling Association
Mr. Fox is a lifetime member.
Webster-Dudley-Oxford (MA) Chamber of Commerce
Executive Board Member, 1977-1986
Recycling Task Force
City of Philadelphia, PA 1979-1983
Boy Scouts of America, Brooklyn NY
Over 15 years serving as Scoutmaster and other leadership positions. 1955-1970
Awards, Honors, and Recognition
New Jersey Departments of Energy and Environmental Protection: “Outstanding Achievement in Recycling” 1980
Environmental Action Coalition of New York: Outstanding Contribution for his “Defusing the Garbage Time Bomb” conferences.
The National Recycling Coalition “Lifetime Achievement and Recycler of the Year” award received in 2007
The Houston Corporate Recycling Council has initiated the “Murray J. Fox Innovative Recycling Award.”
Iowa Recycling Association annually presents “The Murray J. Fox Innovative Recycling Award” recognizing achievements in all forms of recycling.
Patents
3,927,764 – Stacking Collar for Warehousing and Transporting Sheet Material
6,263,807 – Reinforced Plastic Pallet
Workshops, Conferences, Seminars
- First National Recycling Congress, Fresno, CA
- New Hampshire Resource Recover Association Municipal Congress
- Cook College and New Jersey Camden College. New Jersey
- Wharton School of Business. Pennsylvania
- Presentations or lectures on behalf of the following states:
- New York
- New Jersey
- Massachusetts
- Rhode Island
- New Hampshire
- Connecticut
- Pennsylvania
- Kentucky
