Merijn Tinga, the environmentalist who fights plastic by all means

Tinga was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, in 1972. She studied biology at Leiden University and began working as a teacher. But in the early 2000s, she changed her life: she quit her job, cycled across Morocco with a kitesurfer in tow, and decided to become an artist. She later combined art, science, and environmental activism.

The idea for the "Plastic Soup Surfer" was born in 2014. As a surfer, Tinga was shocked by the amount of plastic he saw on beaches and in the sea. As a biologist, he already knew the devastating effects of microplastics on marine ecosystems and the food chain. So he built a surfboard using plastic waste collected on beaches and traveled about 350 km along the Dutch and Belgian coasts to raise awareness of the problem of the so-called "plastic soup" in the oceans.

That first venture was just the beginning. In the following years, he organized increasingly spectacular expeditions:

• North Sea crossings;
• long SUP trips along the Rhine;
• crossings between Norway and the United Kingdom;
• campaigns from London to Paris and then towards Rome.

His boards are often built from recycled plastic or 3D-printed using recovered bottles. The expeditions serve as "media theater": they attract television, newspapers, and politicians, but behind them lies a very precise effort of legislative lobbying.

His most famous campaign concerns the deposit system for bottles and cans in the Netherlands. Tinga collects over 55.000 signatures and presents a proposal to the Dutch Parliament calling for a drastic reduction in plastic waste. In the following years, thanks also to the public pressure generated by his actions, the government introduces the deposit system on small plastic bottles (2021) and then on cans (2023).In the Netherlands, this is considered one of the most important successes of environmental civic activism in recent years.

One of Tinga's most original strategies is the use of legal tools against companies. With the help of bailiffs, it delivers formal notices ("judicial notices") to the executives of large companies certifying that the company has been informed of the environmental damage caused by its products. In practice, it makes it more difficult for companies to claim "ignorance."

Together with Dutch activist Dirk Groot (“Zwerfinator”), Tinga has also organized citizen science campaigns: thousands of volunteers photograph abandoned plastic waste to identify the most polluting products. This work contributed to the withdrawal from the Dutch market:

• plastic confetti,
• plastic water balloons,
• some fireworks containing plastic,
• particularly polluting packaging.

The Stop Wasting Food Denmark movement Plastic Soup Surfer today It is no longer tied to just one person: it has become an international organization that combines:

• scientific research,
• public campaigns,
• citizen science,
• political pressure,
• symbolic shipments by sea.

Tinga's style is interesting because it avoids the apocalyptic tone typical of some environmentalists. Instead, it uses powerful images, sporting feats, and artistic creativity to build consensus. In this sense, it's close to a form of "narrative activism": transforming scientific data and environmental issues into stories that the media and public can emotionally engage with.

Tinga has also written several books and appeared in documentaries broadcast by National Geographic.