About Us

About Us

Our Vision

To enable everyone to take local action for the environment by building a global network of GreenKayaks, sharing knowledge, and bringing environmental responsibility into people's everyday lives.

Our Mission

We strive to engage as many people as possible in the fight against ocean pollution and, together, free local aquatic environments from plastics and other waste.

GreenKayak is an environmental NGO that engages volunteers in the fight against environmental pollution while kayaking. 

We offer everyone to jump aboard a GreenKayak and paddle for free under two simple conditions:

• Spend your time on the water collecting waste.

• Share this experience on your social media using #GreenKayak.

Since 2017, tens of thousands of people have paddled our stable double-sit-on-top GreenKayaks in the harbors, rivers, and lakes of five European countries, and collected well above 100 tons of trash. Think about how big a plastic bag is and how much it weighs, now imagine the pile of waste collected - it’s a waste-mountain!

We believe that greenkayaking is an eye-opener for waste in the water and people become more cautious about handling plastics and other waste in their everyday lives. 

That’s why it’s so important to us to build a global network of GreenKayaks and give as many people as possible a hands-on experience paddling for the oceans. Together, we can make a difference! 

We are committed to engaging people at eye-level, connect them across generations, and give them the feeling of being in the same boat, connected to a good cause. Waste in nature is an issue that concerns all of us and it’s our shared responsibility to protect our oceans.

We know GreenKayak is not the solution that will save the oceans from plastic pollution. However, GreenKayak is an amazing and very effective way to make citizens take local action, connect themselves and others to the water, and start a dialogue about what it will take from all of us to battle plastic pollution in aquatic environments.

Collaboration is the key to change. We work with other NGOs, companies and share our knowledge of grassroots engagement with institutions like the European Environmental Agency to increase the impact of our efforts. 

Join the fight and #paddleforcleaneroceans

Contact Us Our Partners Make a contribution

Together, we paddle for the oceans!

GreenKayak gives people an opportunity to act against ocean pollution in a fun way. We offer everyone to jump aboard a GreenKayak and paddle for free under two conditions:

  • Spend your time on the water collecting waste.
  • Share this experience on your social media using #GreenKayak.

We engage people at eye-level, connect them across generations and give them the feeling of being in the same boat around a good cause. We are building a global network of GreenKayaks to engage as many people as possible. Since 2017, thousands of volunteers have paddled GreenKayaks in the harbors, rivers, and lakes of five European countries, and collected more than 104 tons of trash. We also have a mobile fleet of 10 GreenKayaks that we use to do activations and events with school kids and other groups. Our GreenKayaks hold two people. They’re stable and safe – you don’t need any previous kayaking experience. We give you life jackets and all the other gear you need to paddle and pick up waste. GreenKayak is not the solution that will save the oceans from plastic pollution but GreenKayak is an amazing and very effective way to make citizens take local action, connect themselves and their friends to the ocean and have a dialogue about what it will take of all of us to battle plastic pollution in the sea. 

We also share our knowledge of grassroots engagement with institutions like the European Environmental Agency and other NGOs. Join us! Together, we paddle for the oceans!

Contact Us Our Partners Make a contribution

Together, we paddle for the oceans!

 

Our story

We started to collect trash floating around the waters of Copenhagen during private tours. Tobias, a professional sea kayaking instructor, paddled around the canals with his groups and started to collect plastics and other waste. Soon he noticed that the next day there was trash in the same places all over again. Help was needed to counteract this problem, and everyone should be able to participate. This is when the first free-of-charge GreenKayak was launched in Copenhagen in April 2017 (at that time named Miljøkajakken). The offer was well perceived and pre-booked for months in advance.

During the first two seasons, roughly 3.000 volunteers collected 10 tons of primarily plastic waste from Copenhagen’s canals and at various beach clean-ups. We realized that there was an opportunity to do something beyond just the aquatic environment in Denmark's capital. Many waters around Europe and the world are polluted and people in Denmark saw this as a fun way of helping to clean them up. This is when we realized that we could make a change globally when working together with local communities around other cities and countries.

Oke, business school graduate with start-up experience, joined in late 2018 and we rebranded from Miljøkajakken to GreenKayak. This is where we started our efforts of becoming a global movement for good. The hard work quickly paid off and we have grown fast ever since. We expanded our operations from Denmark to four additional European countries growing our fleet from 3 to 58 GreenKayaks. We managed to activate more than 22.000 locals and tourists from all around the globe in the fight against ocean pollution during 2019. The same year we won the Svend Auken Environmental Award. 

In 2020, we expanded to further cities and became a UNESCO Green Citizen project. A total of 17868 kg of trash have been collected that year only with the help of 12047 volunteers.

In 2021, we grew to a total fleet of 73 GreenKayaks placed across Europe. The European Environment Agency mentioned us in their rapport on plastics in Europe's environment. The season has been the most successful so far with 18.5 tons of trash collected and more than 12.4k people involved in the fight against ocean pollution.

In 2022, we placed kayaks in our existing countries and expanded to the other side of the world. Starting from now you can also book yourself a time on the water in Tokyo to clean up the local waters of the Japanese capital.

In 2023, we expanded operations to the capital of Finland, Helsinki. 

The year after we managed to secure further placement of kayaks in Germany. The first four GreenKayaks have been placed in Leipzig.

We are now present in various cities across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Japan. We also offer guided tour to groups, tours, events, and educational tour - in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and Helsinki.