Under the bright Scandinavian sun, my family glided out onto the Copenhagen Harbour in our kayaks with a mission: to collect as much garbage as we could. Instead of renting boats to explore the city’s gorgeous canals, we spent a few hours giving back through GreenKayak.org, an environmental NGO that provides free two-person kayaks in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Germany in exchange for filling an onboard bucket with floating trash found during your paddling adventure.
The concept is simple yet brilliant: Enjoy a leisurely ride soaking up the city’s vibrant vibe while plucking debris with a long grabber tool along the way. Back at the dock, weigh your catch with a portable scale, register it in the GreenKayak app, and pose with your bounty for a social media send-off using #GreenKayak before tossing the trash in big bins — instead of it ending up clogging the ocean.
Launching a movement
“The idea of giving people the opportunity to paddle for free in exchange for collecting trash came to me while I was out running,” explains GreenKayak’s founder, Tobias Weber-Andersen, a sea-kayaking instructor and former manager of the popular Kayak Bar restaurant who started cleaning up Copenhagen’s canals during private tours.
Frustrated to see trash reappearing every day, Weber-Andersen decided to think bigger: In April 2017, he introduced the first free kayak, originally called Miljøkajakken, which means “Environment Kayak.”
“It was an immediate success, which I honestly didn’t expect,” he recalls.
After adding two more kayaks, demand surged, with people booking weeks in advance. Then, on a surf trip, Weber-Andersen met Oke Carstensen, a business school graduate with start-up experience. Sharing a love for the ocean and convinced that local action could drive global change, the duo joined forces in 2018 to scale the organization into an international movement for cleaner water.
Since then, GreenKayak has worked with other NGOs and organizations in Denmark and across Europe, boosting ocean-friendly tourism and garnering international acclaim. In 2019, the organization received the Svend Auken Environmental Award, and it became a UNESCO Green Citizen project in 2020.
To date, 105,542 GreenKayak volunteers — half of them tourists — have removed 158 tons of waste from local waterways. GreenKayak is one of many voluntourism programs around the world tailored to travelers and cruisers of all ages. Beginners are welcome, and paddling is a family-friendly way to spend a port day.
Small items, big impact
There are 68 GreenKayaks available at 41 locations in 19 cities, and they get snapped up fast so it’s best to book far in advance. We found it easy to book our water-based adventure through the GreenKayak app. We picked up our boats at Kayak Republic — one of 16 host locations on Copenhagen’s waterfront — where volunteers handed us life jackets and a map of the canals. They instructed us to stay near the shore away from boats.
“On average, each kayak collects three kilos (6.6 pounds) of waste during one trip,” says Weber-Andersen.
To fund its operations, GreenKayak has partnerships with companies that pay to feature their logo on the kayaks; sponsors receive monthly reports listing how many tourists and locals used their branded kayak and how much trash they picked up. We collected about 15 pounds’ worth of floating debris — mostly paper cups, plastic bags, and cigarette butts.
GreenKayak also plays a key role in CopenPay, an initiative introduced in 2024 by Wonderful Copenhagen, the city’s official tourism organization, to inspire visitors to act more sustainably by offering discounts to popular attractions in exchange for environmentally-friendly actions and activities — including.…
By Wendy Helfenbaum
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