In a world grappling with waste and sustainability, two high school seniors have turned used clothing into a company for dogs in need, changing how we view upcycling and waste.
Inspired by the ideas of Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores, Palo Alto High School student Sophia Liu and her friend Olivia Liu co-founded Pupcycled this year, a non-profit organization that gives a new life to unwanted fabric by turning it into dog toys.
“We collect clothing that nobody wants and would be otherwise trash, and they’ll donate it to us,” Liu said. “And instead of throwing it away, we’ll turn clothing into dog toys.”
Thanks to their dedicated team, Pupcycled has successfully reduced waste through used donated goods.
With over 450 volunteers spanning four states, Pupcycled takes advantage of all its locations and hosts clothing donation drives.
“We have a team of around 15 people that operates our events and all our social media,” Liu said. “For our volunteers, we have some recurring volunteers that will just continually show up for events and help, but it’s mostly just the public. We have these events at libraries, and anyone that wants to [come] volunteer can just show up.”
Since starting the organization, Liu has had many things to be proud of. Despite having a rough start at the beginning, the company has created many dog toys donated to organizations like Pets in Need, a local animal shelter in Palo Alto and Redwood City.
“During the first few months, it was really difficult for me and Olivia to produce toys ourselves, but now we’ve made over 1,500 with the help of the community,” Liu said. “I’m really proud of that because it just feels like we’ve come a long way.”
Although Pupcycled has had many recent successes, it has been a challenge to manage with school and other extracurriculars.
Busy schedules, planning events, and teaching the public how to make these toys were hard tasks. Even though Liu had a passion for sewing and upcycling, not all volunteers were able to get the hang of it as easily as she was.
“It was difficult at first to teach people how to make our toys,” Liu said. “But once we expanded bigger, we had to decide on something easier for the public to understand. And as a student, it’s just kind of busy running these events along with schoolwork.”
Pupcyled’s co-owners had to come up with multiple variations of dog toys before settling on the final designs.
According to Liu, the creation process was relatively simple. While creating the toys, they would brainstorm simple designs and attach them to the sewn toys.
One of their most important goals was for their products to be recognizable as dog toys while ensuring they weren’t too complicated to make.
“We did try other designs like animals and flowers, but it was just too complicated,” Liu said. “We wanted to make a lot of toys, so we just had to settle on a bone, which was simple and recognizable as a dog toy.”
Sophia Liu and Olivia Liu do plan on expanding to further locations. By posting on Pupcycled’s social media accounts and asking different communities, they hope to reach more volunteers interested in upcycling and reducing waste.
“We’re saving clothes that nobody wants, and we’re also bringing them to somebody that needs them,” Liu said.
