Merijn Tinga travels the world collecting waste to promote returnable containers.

Traveling the world, nonstop, with surfboards and kitesurf boards made from recycled plastic. And with a very specific goal: to promote the Deposit Refund System (DRS), the modern "returnable" system for plastic bottles and aluminum cans. 

Merijn Tinga is a Dutch biologist, artist, and kitesurfing enthusiast. Born in 1972, during his trips to the sea he continually saw bottles, pieces of plastic, and other debris on the beaches. As a biologist, he knew that the problem wasn't simply aesthetic: plastic that ends up in the sea fragments into microplastics and can enter ecosystems and the food chain.

In 2014 , he decided to do something very theatrical: he collected plastic on the beaches and used it to build a surfboard . He then used it for an expedition of about 350 km along the Dutch and Belgian coasts . Thus, the character of the Plastic Soup Surfer was born.

Tinga quickly realized that simply picking up trash from beaches wasn't enough. You could clean up a beach today and find it full of bottles tomorrow. So she shifted her focus: she didn't just want to convince people not to throw away plastic, she wanted to change the rules that allow waste to be produced and abandoned.

In 2016, he crossed the North Sea on a board made from recycled plastic, accompanying his venture with a campaign to introduce a deposit system on bottles in the Netherlands : you pay a small deposit when you buy the bottle and get it back when you return it.

Her petition garnered over 60.000 signatures , and her campaign helped bring the issue to the Dutch political agenda. Deposits were introduced on small plastic bottles in 2021, and on cans in 2023. In 2017, Tinga changed modes of transportation again: she traveled the Rhine from its source to the sea , about 1.200–1.250 km. The message this time was: plastic doesn't originate in the ocean; it starts on land, enters rivers, and ultimately reaches the sea. Along the way, she collected bottles from the river and even returned them to the producers , using a bailiff to symbolically hand over the waste to the companies.

In the following years, his expeditions became increasingly extensive. He sailed and paddled across the North Sea, the Rhine, and various parts of Europe, using windsurfing, kitesurfing, SUP, e-foils , and boards made, at least in part, from recovered or recycled plastic.

In 2023, for example, Tinga runs approximately 1.800 km from Oslo to London in 32 days on a recycled plastic board, carrying the message of the security deposit system. Since then, every year a long journey: London-Paris (2024), Paris-Nice (2025), Nice-Rome (2026). Once in Rome, Tinga also managed to get a meeting with Pope Leo XIVThe next major project indicated by Tinga is a new expedition in the Mediterranean: starting from Venice and arriving in Istanbul, crossing the Mediterranean in several stages, during the 2027 and 2028.

Image source: Plastic Soup Surfer/Facebook

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