Five Rangitoto College students who took part in last year’s Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme have come up with an innovative solution to the large stockpiles of old unusable tyres laying around within their community.

Paws for a Cause members Oliver Zhang, Alex Zhang, Jasmine Jared, Emily Ren, and Max Ji started up initially in mid-2020 in response to the Covid lockdowns after recognizing that lower socioeconomic families were struggling to provide for themselves, let alone their beloved pet cat and dogs.

“We set out with the goal of donating pet beds and kennels to those in need within our local community after seeing an opportunity to take the mounds of unroadworthy tyres from our local mechanics and “upcycle” them into fashionable pet beds, thus giving birth to the first few iterations of our “ToughRuff Tyre Pet Beds.”

The students showcased their product designs at their local Browns Bay Sunday Market, and also the Young Enterprise Scheme Trade Fair, the annual opportunity for Auckland’s highschool aged entrepreneurs to showcase their products. Since then, they have partnered with local pet welfare NGOs such as the HumaneSociety of NZ and the SPCA which have helped them distribute the products nationally to communities all around New Zealand (currently focused on the Albany region due to covid restrictions). They have also expanded their product range to include a soft pet bed variety made from recycled polyesters and cottons shipped from overseas to New Zealand.

They have also received funding support from a plethora of different sources, including from the Educational Company Crimson Education, from local and organisations such as Spotlight and Gongcha, from hosting community fundraising events and the hobbies of team-members such as “investing in stocks,” which Oliver claims to be one of their main sources of funding so far.

Across the two years that they have been operating, they have donated over 2000 units of their soft pet beds (worth over $80,000) and more than 60 of their “Tough-Rough” tyre pet beds.

In addition to pursuing their social enterprising goals, the students have also chosen to address the environmental problem of “Tyre Leachate” within NZ, stemming from the prolific dumping of car tyres and piling up in landfills.

“It’s not a very well known environmental issue, so we thought that it would be a great opportunity to spread awareness of the issue.” Every year, millions of old car tyres that end up in landfills around New Zealand, overtime, these rubber coverings are weathered and broken down to start releasing various chemicals and toxic heavy metals such as Mercury, and damaging local ecosystems through soil acidification and runoff.

CEO Oliver Zhang says that the team is currently trying to get support from the Auckland local council to, and are calling on current highschool students within the North Shore and Auckland area to join in, and eventually take over the operations as the students attend University.

Several of the students have stated their intentions to pursue career directions related to the Young Enterprise Scheme, including Business, Economics, Environmental Studies and Engineering.

“The main goal now is to keep the company running while remaining economically sustainable into 2022 and beyond, especially as most of our team members are starting University; we’re hoping to recruit more members and volunteers to our team to continue with our operations.”

If you are interested in joining or supporting the Paws for a Cause team in 2022, you can join through their website or contact them through their Instagram page @paws4acausenz. You can also make donations to their organisation, or support them by purchasing their products, whereby 100% of the profits will be either reinvested into supporting their non-profit cause.

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