Olaf Schuiling: in memoriam

Olaf Schuiling

(February 26, 1932 - December 19, 2021)

Roelof Dirk Schuiling (Olaf) passed away last Thursday at the age of 89. Until old age he was committed to saving the world with stones. He believed that if we all did our bit, we could prevent a lot of misery. The founders of greenSand adopted his ideas and have been marketing products made from the CO2-cleaning mineral since 2011.

Eddy Wijnker, the current director of greenSand, learned everything he knows about Olivijn from this special professor: Because I myself did not study, I looked up to the professor, who struck me as a real, distinguished professor. The distance I initially felt disappeared when I was his apprentice and Olaf said: “You are a fast learner”.

“That he felt no distance from the people he spoke to was typical of Olaf, who was called by his first name by everyone instead of professor Schuiling,” says geologist Pol Knops, who is taking over from Olaf in terms of scientific knowledge about Olivine. According to Pol, Olaf was not the archetype of a closet scholar. He remembers the first meeting with Olaf, sometime in 1993:

Someone came in with a bucket of pig manure and a bucket of jarosite (for the non-geologists: looks like manure, but doesn’t stink - ed.). He had figured out that the waste stream (the jarosite) from a factory could react with the pig manure. So that HAD to be tested. And it worked. “Of course,” he said.

Pieter der Weduwen remembers how excited he got when he read in 2017 about Olaf’s proposals for Richard Branson’s “Virgin Earth Challenge” to remove 1 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. “I found Olaf’s proposals so fascinating that I contacted him. This great and inspiring man made sure that I founded greenSand together with Eddy a year later.”

Olaf was a man who spoke to everyone and everyone spoke to him. It is striking how many people say "I met him once at a conference. I don't remember anything about the conference. But he made a huge impression on me."

It wasn't just the man himself who made an impression. Many people who visited Olaf at the University of Utrecht remember his room. Eddy says about it: it was full of sand and stones. Pol says: It was a mess. And no, he couldn't find his things himself either. During an annual election of the most messy rooms at the University, to his surprise (or rather indignation) he "only" came third.

greenSand will continue to work together with nature to save the Earth. Because as he himself said: “Look at nature, before you whine too much. We can keep the CO2 problem under control if we use minerals that weather.''

Olaf, thank you!

The greenSand team