“The common narrative is that we consumers are fully responsible for the end-of-life of that plastic. We should shift this sentiment; producers should take much more responsibility than they have.”
Merijn Tinga
A baby blue Toyota Hiace was my tiny home on wheels for almost a year. I had packed my bags (actually only one very unbalancing and heavy camping bag), met my buddy at the Newark Airport and traveled… and then traveled… and… you guessed it, traveled. Then, I was in Australia.
While it’s true that surfing every day, enjoying the vast landscapes, squaring up to kangaroos and perching atop protruding headlands has stamped euphoric Aussie connotations in my brain forever, I noticed something else as well. The most pristine, untouched, white sand beaches that were many miles — or in the Aussie case, kilometers — away from the nearest towns and cities, were riddled with used plastic products. I’m thinking of one beach in particular, that, after surfing there for several hours by our lonesomes, with the fear of great whites in the back of our minds, my friend and I dubbed “junkyards.” It’s hours from the nearest town on the southern coast of the continent; I will never give up the exact coordinates.
But it’s funny, every other beach that we’d visited, even beaches directly in front of the big cities, were mostly unoccupied by plastic waste. Why this beach then, barn? Beach cleanups? Maybe. After talking to my new Dutch friend (we’ll get to him in just a sec), I realized that the plastic at “junkyards” had floated for thousands of miles in ocean currents, just to wash up along this remote, untouched, Australian coastline. So, it wasn’t so much that there is nobody around to clean that beach, it’s that there are constantly new plastic arrivals floating in from other countries, rough and weathered like Chuck Noland. As I’m learning, bottle deposits and producer accountability will save “junkyards.” Australia has great bottle deposit systems in place — especially in New South Wales — and during my time there, I believe it was 10 cents per bottle. (No wonder I learned the subtle art of dumpster diving.) But what about countries surrounding the island-continent?
“Plastic relates to organic material as normal humans relate to superman.”
The environment
“Plastic relates to organic material as normal humans relate to superman,” said Merijn Tinga from the small square Zoom box on my laptop. “The Plastic Soup Surfer” graciously agreed to meet and talk with me about plastic litter, surfing (well, kitesurfing and windsurfing), and activism.
Merijn is a biologist/ artist/ activist/ waterman/ from the Netherlands who sends chills down the spines of major single-use plastic bottle producers around Europe. He simply holds CEOs accountable for the end-of-life cycle of plastic products. I’ve never claimed to be an expert on plastic waste, but I do know one thing: “junkyards” would be 100% sicker if we didn’t have to walk through this just to get to the water. However, Merijn was able to give me an idea of why the “superman” of organic material is so detrimental to the environment, the food chain and us barneys.
“Plastic just breaks up into smaller pieces. We are actually inhaling these small plastic pieces from our clothes or from other residuals from our daily lives. We are finding plastics in the placenta of unborn babies. Of course, we don’t know what the real effects are but we do know that our exposure to microplastics and plastic residuals is increasing,” he said.
Plastic is indestructible, so it accumulates everywhere, not only in the ocean. In fish, we don’t know exactly what happens; whether they just poop it out while reading the Morning Brew before breakfast or if it actually stays in them. Filter feeders, however, like oysters, muscles and clams do keep microplastics within their system. So, if you’re enjoying a well-deserved beachside oyster shooter at your local salty eatery, then perhaps it’s seasoned with a bit of plastic. Yummm.
“There are actually more microplastics on the rim of the plate that you’re eating off of from the air around you than in the muscles themselves, so it’s just everywhere. At the moment, we just don’t know how harmful the effects are,” he explained as my chest tightened with paranoia. Merijn also told me that lung inflammation and extra pressure on the immune system were found to be some negative effects of microplastic inhalation.
He continued, “The biggest microplastic source, by far, is actually plastic litter that is breaking up into smaller pieces in the environment.” So, the ancient Hawaiian art that I’m always talking about — you know, the one that supposedly brings you closer to nature — actually brings you closer to microplastics. When you’re shredding some gnar pounders, you’re actually surfing waves that are more plastic now than water, twisted and evil (yikes, that’s already two Star Wars references). While I was just attempting a lame joke and there is obviously more water than trash, I think you get the point: plastic is invading the Earth’s marine ecosystems. There are five garbage patches — floating trash, scattered from the ocean surface to the ocean floor — collecting more trash each year. One garbage patch, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, contains 250 pieces of trash per human on Earth. Yummm again. Read more about how much plastic there is in the ocean here.
Merijn Tinga
Merijn is originally from the eastern Netherlands but spent much of his early life visiting tropical locations because his father was a traveling physician for developing countries. He fell in love with the ocean and windsurfing — the ocean has a way of seducing us, as you know. He ended up in Leiden, a city to the southwest of Amsterdam and 15 minutes from the beach. He studied biology and eventually began teaching at a local high school. Windsurfing was his passion and the beaches provided the trade winds to fuel his stoke.
In the year 2001, as kitesurfing was starting to become popular, he decided it was time for a sabbatical. Following a surf-lifestyle magnetic pull that summons most sun and salt addicts to make a pilgrimage, Merijn quit his job to follow his kitesurfing dream. “I didn’t have that much money, so I took my bike with a small trailer and I cycled 4,000 km (roughly 2,500 miles) to Morocco to go kitesurfing in the Atlantic,” he said as I suddenly felt guilty for taking planes and driving during my pilgrimage. That’s like grabbing your bike from your New York City apartment, carrying it over your shoulder down twelve flights of stairs, and then, cycling to Las Vegas in search of more frequent, more high-risk gambling. The adventure took him three months. Am I not hard-core enough? Whatever barn. Merijn had all the intentions of returning to normal life, but once you taste nomadic freedom, it’s hard to go back; regular working life just seems bland. “Once I was there, I thought, I’m not going back behind a computer, I want to become an artist,” he said. And that he did. He started a small sculpting collective which eventually led to environmental activism.
Becoming The Plastic Soup Surfer
Fast forward to 2014: Merijn was kitesurfing the dutch coast and becoming a master of down-winders. It wasn’t unusual for him to start at one coastal village and end up 30 miles down the coast, grab some much-deserved oysters, and then kite back.
At the same time, plastic pollution on Dutch beaches began trending in the news and coastal inhabitants were starting to notice bottles and plastic everywhere. Merijn admits, “Plastic has been there for years, but I began noticing it. I began doing research on Sea Birds, 90% had plastic in their stomachs.”
Merijn decided it was time to make a statement. After collecting plastic from the beach, he took an ironing rod and a gas torch and melted it all together. He then welded a metal mold (picture a cake pan shaped like a surfboard) and filled it with melted plastic.
How did it surf? “It was un-surfable. It was very heavy. It was like 15 kilos (33 pounds) and had holes in it and leaked and got heavier as I surfed it. It was the first surfboard that I ever (quote-unquote) shaped. It was like a Dutch clog. You know, a wooden shoe?”
From the depths of his laboratory, holding a heavy clog-like plastic soup surfboard, the Plastic Soup Surfer was born. He garnered the attention of Dutch media outlets and attempted to kitesurf from Belgium to Germany along the Dutch coast — a 300-mile journey. Unfortunately, the board was just far too heavy. His foot straps were made of old fishing nets and wetsuits, that dug and cut into his feet. He ended up washing up on an island off the Dutch coast after three days, feverish and bloody. Although he was unable to finish his trip, a couple of important breakthroughs occurred: he got his nickname, “The Plastic Soup Surfer,” and began to create awareness on plastic pollution.
Watch the attempt below:
“Mid-summer parties were happening, people were dancing on plastic trash and I’m here, cleaning the beaches and realizing we need to tackle this at the source.”
Merijn Tinga
Back To Junkyards And Bottle Deposits
Merijn went on a five-month sailing trip around Scandinavia with his family, when a spark of enlightenment, ignited from his surroundings, influenced the trajectory of his mission. The idea of fighting for Dutch bottle deposits hit him like a second reef bomb at pipeline.
“During the sailing trip, we did research by sampling water for microplastics, for a research institute. We had a trawl net and we cleaned beaches each day. Uninhabited islands as well. I started noticing that the bottles — the ones that still had labels — that were washing up on the uninhabited islands and beaches in Scandinavia were Dutch or English produced bottles.”
For him, it was clear: all of the coastlines that they were frequenting — Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia — belonged to countries that had bottle deposit systems in place. So this meant that because of the sea currents, prevailing winds and a lack of English and Dutch bottle deposit systems, the plastic ended up on the west coast of Sweden and Norway.
It all came back to me. The rolling lefts and rights wedging up onto the rocky shelf at “juckyards,” seeing a seal pop its head up playfully, thinking the seal was a shark and nearly wetting myself, and, contrary to the raw beauty of the area, getting out and laying in the sand next to a sea of plastic bottles. “Bottle deposits,” the barn quietly whispers to himself as he stares into the distance, perplexed and then enlightened.
The North Sea And The Rhine
In 2016, with a new sense of direction, the Plastic Soup Surfer morphed from awareness-oriented to action-oriented. It was no longer, “how can I spread the word about Dutch plastic bottle pollution,” no, now it was, “how can I do something about Dutch plastic bottle pollution.”
Merijn decided to get back on a recycled plastic-made surf craft to encourage signatures for a petition that would see that lawmakers incorporate bottle deposits in his country. He gave me some details of the journey and inspired my inner activist, “I kitesurfed from Scheveningen, Netherlands to Lowestoft, England, across the North Sea which is about 200 KM (124 miles), on a board made from plastic bottles. It was a Guinness Book record attempt. I wanted to get a minimum of 40,000 signatures for this petition. I had this resolution, written myself, and I wanted to present it to these parliament members. Policymakers had been fighting each other for over a decade on whether or not to implement bottle deposits in the Netherlands. I came along with my resolution and this was the political breakthrough. This was the moment that it (The Plastic Soup Surfer) went farther than awareness.”
Watch the mini-doc below:
Merijn was at it again in 2017. He built yet another plastic board. This time it was in the form of a SUP (stand-up paddle board). A touch different than kitesurfing, SUPing requires only a board and a paddle. His mission was to go from “resource to sea,” from the start of the Rhine River to the North Sea, collecting plastic waste along the way.
“I paddle this SUP board down the entire Rhine. After the paddle, I wanted to figuratively go back upstream to plastic producers (CEOs of large companies that package their products in single-use plastic) with a bailiff — a judicial instrument we had developed ourselves — and try to make a change at the source.”
Check out this documentary of him SUPing down the Rhine. It was featured in National Geographic.
Results (Spoiler Alert!)
“I was pretty naive back then, I thought if I did something spectacular (kitesurfing from the Netherlands to England with national news coverage oughta do the trick), I would come back from England and there would be 20,000 signatures on the petition,” Merijn said with a telling smile.
Unfortunately, directly following his journey, he compiled only 1,500 signatures. Not quite the 40,000 that he had hoped for. However, (spoiler alert) it did eventually work. Six months later he had those signatures and the document was ready to be presented to parliament. “It was only when there was a deadline, and when certain prominent people started signing my petition that it really started taking off,” he explained.
Following 55,000 signatures, the Dutch government vowed to reduce plastic pollution by 90% in three years — the first tangible victory for the plastic soup surfer. Still, in the years following, plastic pollution actually increased. Barn, I thought you said “Bottle Deposits!” I’m getting there… During these years, members of the Dutch government vowed to reduce plastic but had not actually put any laws in place — like, say, bottle deposits. It wasn’t until state secretary Van Veldhoven passed a law that forced supermarkets to implement bottle deposits, that the impact became visible. Within 3 months of this new law, there was a vast improvement and much fewer plastic bottles washing up on the beaches of the Netherlands. Simple: people brought bottles back to the supermarket to get money back instead of losing track of them or throwing them out of the car window.
Merijn concludes that plastic is “catalyzing the Throw-Away Society.” It’s not uncommon that us beach bums and ocean disciples help to clean up plastic around our waves. Does that really solve the problem? It helps to make the beach look nice, but it doesn’t solve anything. Merijn said, “The common narrative is that we consumers are fully responsible for the end-of-life of that plastic. We should shift this sentiment; producers should take much more responsibility than they have.”
The Plastic Soup Surfer Book
I was pumped to see that Merijn had written a book that chronicled his adventures. He’s had a lot of adventures, many more than I’ve mentioned today. However, currently, the book is still being translated into English (think of this entire interview as a teaser).
So what’s the book about?
Merijn gave me the quick low-down. “Well, it is a book about universal truths, but it is also a very Dutch and European story. It’s an adventure about starting small, without having any idea of the greater picture of where you would like to take it (sound familiar?), but knowing that you want to follow your passion — which in my case is surfing. Then, it’s growing and gaining momentum to a point where you can start being a spokesperson and talking to CEOs and government officials. It’s that story, but it’s also about trying to make a difference, what can you do? What is your responsibility, your place in the world?”
What’s next for the Plastic Soup Surfer?
“There is still a lot more to be done; plastic is just a small part of all the environmental problems that we are facing.” Merijn Tinga.
If you would like to learn more about the Plastic Soup Surfer, check out his Instagram @plasticsoupsurfer or visit www.plasticsoupsurfer.org. You can also email us at [email protected] with any follow-up questions and we’ll be sure to get back to you! I hope you’ve enjoyed, please make sure to subscribe to the blog so you can stay up to date with shapers, events, interviews, cringey stories and more! Also, if you feel so inclined, consider donating to Merijns campaigning here.
– Barney Beadette
P.S.
The Barney recently appeared on blog.feedspot.com/surf_blogs/ — a list of surf blogs — comin’ in hot at #14. Honestly, the list is pretty random but still cool. Check it out here, I’m just honored that the internet allows the barn to appear next to some of the others on that list.