Meet Merijn Tinga.
He is a biologist and an extreme dedicated surfer with a clear mission. Merijn wants to put a stop to the global pollution of the oceans with plastic waste by using his talent for environmental protection. Merijn started his campaign with a petition against disposable plastic bottles and in 2017 he submitted 60,000 signed petitions to the Dutch parliament. Nice, but not spectacular. But Tinga wants more since the ‘plastic soup’ (a sea of plastic bottles and plastic parts) problem is getting worse.
With his surfboard, made of melted plastic waste, Merijn glided in 2020 on his kite board across the English channel from the Netherlands to Great Britain and recently he arrived in Gent, my hometown, during a 385 km surf trip from Brussels to Amsterdam. Wherever he appears, Tinga appeals to the public to restrict their plastic consumption and sign a resolution to forbid different forms of plastic-use.
His goal? Reduce the amount of single-use plastic in the Netherlands by 90 percent in three years.
If you think one human can not save the planet or at least do something meaningful for mother nature, think again. You go Plastic Soup Surfer!
