‘Many people saw it as a strange hobby’

Lanette Fidrych, the co-founder of the Portland-based upcycled family pet item company Cycle Dog, was coming to grips with an issue — when she had a concept.

The passionate cyclist had a great deal of flat bike tubes lying around that were otherwise predestined for land fills, and she quite wished to prevent that.

The lightbulb minute came when Fidrych, a previous Nike staff member, began producing belts out of her flat bike tubes as a method to provide a 2nd life. That ultimately developed into collars and leashes for her 2 Labradors, and the items were a hit.

“After getting positive feedback from friends, I decided to launch a company with my husband Paul, with the aim of bringing our recycled bike tube products to market,” Fidrych informed The Cool Down.

As 2 passionate animal enthusiasts who didn’t like the unsustainable items that filled pet store aisles, the couple duo began Cycle Dog in 2009 as a response to their own dilemma.

Things rapidly spiraled from there, with need requiring her to stop her job at Nike and concentrate on Cycle Dog full-time. The woman-led business has actually grown to 30 staff members (and 10 dogs), with all items made in America.

Cycle Dog’s data are outstanding, with almost 2.5 million tubes and almost 4 million plastic bottles upcycled into family pet items since 2019. But protecting all of the product to upcycle wasn’t simple.

“Scaling the business quickly using a recycled material presented challenges, such as finding enough bike shops to hold tubes for us and the time it took to pick them up,” Fidrych informed The Cool Down. “However, I am proud of the relationships we have built with bike shops for recycling, and the fact that we have recycled millions of tubes from the landfill.”

Cycle Dog’s items are created to last, even further lowering land fill waste and promoting a sustainable way of life.

For example, Fidrych says that while the typical customer changes their dog’s bed several times each year, Cycle Dog’s beds are suggested to last 5 to 7 years. This dedication to resilient and quality items goes through all of the Cycle Dog items.

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Fidrych says her success story is developed around an understanding that every little action has an effect.

“It’s all about shifting your mindset from waste to opportunity,” she said. “I was once excited about just one garbage bag being reused, and now I am thrilled about pallets and pallets of materials being reused.”

“When I started, many people saw it as a strange hobby, but now it’s seen as a cool thing,” she included. “This shift in perception is a generational change that I find very encouraging.”

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