Merijn Tinga is currently travelling in the Baltic Sea with a windsurfing board made from plastic waste. The activist from the Netherlands is surfing from Oslo to London to "give back" plastic waste that has drifted across the North Sea from Great Britain to Norway. Originally, Tinga wanted to travel through the Limfjord and then along Denmark's North Sea coast, but due to too much wind he decided to take a Baltic Sea route via Sweden and Copenhagen. He wants to reach Kiel on Friday or Saturday.
Another challenge awaits him there: as windsurfing is not permitted on the Kiel Canal, Merijn is still looking for a boat that can take him through the canal to Brunsbüttel. He then wants to set off into the North Sea on Sunday or Monday.
Windsurf board made from plastic waste
The tour that the activist has set himself is a total of 2000 kilometres long. The start was on 17 June in Oslo. "When I completed my second expedition in 2015, I was shocked by the amount of plastic waste on the Scandinavian coast," writes Tinga on his website. "A closer look at the still legible labels showed that these bottles had travelled all the way from the Netherlands and the UK across the sea, carried by the ocean currents and the wind." The aim of his campaign is to symbolically bring back this plastic waste. To this end, he has built a touring board from bottles and other waste, reinforced with natural fibres made from mushrooms. The shape comes from Rob van den Berg.
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On Wednesday, Tinga passed the southernmost point of Denmark near Gedser and is now heading west. He made progress of 75 kilometres, which was significantly more due to the many cross courses, as he explains in an Instagram video. The day before, it was even 130 kilometres, sometimes with a lot of wind and big waves. Were there any scary moments along the way? "Once in Sweden, I cycled across a bay for an hour and a half in strong winds. In the end, I only just managed to round the rocky headland," he reports. But the Swedish archipelago has been the most beautiful part of the tour so far. However, he also saw the most rubbish in the sea there. "It's much less in Denmark!"
The goal: A good deposit system for the UK
So far, he is on schedule and has planned to arrive in London on 19 July. There, Merijn intends to hand over the board and a list of signatures to Rebecca Pow, Secretary of State for Environmental Quality and Resilience. The background to the campaign is also the fact that the UK does not yet have a deposit system like many other countries. The introduction is planned for 2025, but there is not even a draft text for the law yet. "To support the development of UK law, I will be gathering lessons from the countries I will be visiting on my route. These lessons will be taught to me by the former ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, all of which have long since introduced deposit systems."
In the past, Merijn Tinga has already launched numerous projects to curb environmental pollution caused by plastic waste. He had the feeling that he was surfing on a soup made of plastic - hence the name Plastic Soup Surfer. His first action was a kite tour from Belgium to Germany in 2014 on a board also made from plastic waste. In 2015, he sailed through the North Sea and Baltic Sea and documented the environmental pollution in vlogs, and in 2016 he crossed the North Sea from the Netherlands to England on a kitefoil board in the shape of a plastic bottle. A year later, Tinga paddled the Rhine from its source to its mouth on a SUP.
Merijn Tinga also realises a number of art projects, such as a photo collection of discarded to-go cups or chocolate bar wrappers. He also regularly gives talks about his projects and his goals.
You can find out more about the tour and other activities at plasticsoupsurfer.org . you can follow the journey on Instagram at @plasticsoupsurfer track.
