Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Enter to win Lukker! We're raffling off a piece of Christopher Original over the next couple months at Ray at Night and other local events. This Saturday, March 13th will be your first opportunity to enter. Come see us at theOlive Branch during Ray at Night this Saturday from 6pm-10pm. If you're not able to attend a local event please visit the Contact page atchristopheroriginal.com to enter. There will be new art debuting this Saturday, including "Brisil", so don't miss out.....come to Ray at Night! Official Raffle Rules: 1. Entry must be complete with first name, last name, and email address. 2. One entry per person. 3. Drawing will be held June 12th and winner to be notified by email. 4. Artwork must be claimed within 14 days of announcement. 5. By entering the raffle you will be automatically subscribed to our email list. 6. You must remain subscribed to our email list to be eligible. If you would like to be removed from our mailing list please follow the link at the bottom of this email. Lukker Brisil

Olive Branch has a monthly speaker series. I want to invite anyone to suggest a topic that they would like to hear about. We have wonderful resources available to us. I know so many people invested in their field and have a passion to share their information with others.

We will also do workshops. I am looking forward to Jen Guerin

of JG colorstudios showing us how to apply American Clay.

www.jgcolor.com www.americanclay.com/

No snow here!

Meet Claudia Conners, Gloria Christman, and Joan Warder. These three friends along with other friends walk 3 miles every Friday at the San Diego Bay. I took their photograph near the San Diego Visitor Center off Mission Bay Dr. exit.

Claudia has lived in San Diego for 75 years and when I asked her what is her favorite thing about San Diego she said the weather. It was 9:15 AM at 61 degrees and Claudia was reading the newspaper on the hood of her car while waiting for her friends to arrive. Olive Branch had just made an insulation delivery and I couldn't resist swinging by the bay. I had just heard on KPBS that throughout the nation there were over 4,000 flights cancelled. Hearing that made me just grateful to be a San Diegan.

These native San Diegans were a joy to meet: strong, healthy, beautiful women and when they smiled it made my heart smile. I told them that I hope I am surrounded by friends like them when I am their age. Thank you ladies.

Local business helping a local business.

The Animal Healing Center at 1228 Vega St off W. Morena Ph#619-276-5900 purchased some Ultra Touch Cotton Blue Jean Insulation from Olive Branch.

Beth, Keith, Rex and Rex’s mom are shown here outside the center. The feeling was quiet, peaceful, clean, and loving. Thank you Beth Weingardt and the Animal Healing Center we appreciate your business.

Lisa, co-owner Olive Branch

http://www.socalwatersmart.com/

Look for this symbol on the left side of the above website. This represents how much rebate money for high-efficiency toilets is left. We at Olive Branch want our customers to take full advantage of the benefits offered when making a purchase. We appreciate your business and we work hard so you can rest assured your best interest is in mind.

Olive Branch wants to be around for a long time. We see our business as an investment of passion to identify safe, healthy, and beautiful materials to remodel and build with.

Lisa, co-owner Olive Branch

green behavior

What makes us go green? As a behavioral scientist, I am excited to see research that begins to answer this questions. As with most research questions, however, research studies typically provoke more questions than they answer. We don't exactly know why we engage in green behavior, but we are getting an idea of what things might make us behave "more green."

A few things we've learned about what might promote people to recycle:

(1) Being reminded helps a lot.
A study in a university setting showed that just by posting signs to remind individuals to recycle (in proximity to a convenient way to do it), recycling increased by 29%.

(2) If we get feedback on how we're doing, it helps a lot.
In another university setting, as a result of just posting the number of aluminum cans recycled the previous week, recycling increased by 65%.

(3) Making recycling fun can help a LOT.
This is not a published study, but it is definitely my favorite.  Just by making bottle and can recycling a game, this recycling unit was used 100 times in one night compared to a neighboring unit being used 2 times.   http://bit.ly/5kcgKx 

(4) If we think others are doing it, we'll do it too!

A really interesting study conducted in a hotel showed that the little signs asking guests to save water definitely make a difference in promoting towel re-use.  Moreover, a sign telling guests that 75% of the other guests are reusing towels helped even more.  And even more interesting?  A sign telling guests that other guests that stayed in the specific room they were staying in was even more influential.  That's right, for some reason, when the guests knew that other guests that had stayed in their same room were towel re-users, they were more likely to reuse themselves.

As a follow-up, there is a study in progress to evaluate whether individuals will be more inclined to save water and energy if their residential use bills give them the numbers about how much their neighbors are saving.

Humans are interesting animals, aren't we?

Bright Green Future and MoveSD

Last weekend I made it up to the UCSD campus in La Jolla for the afternoon session on the second day of the Bright Green Future Conference. All afternoon speakers from a wide variety of fields gave short, presentations, providing a lot of information and insight in to the current state of the green development in San Diego. For example there was Bill Powers from the Sierra Club's Smart Energy Solutions Campaign who wants to put solar panels on every building for distributed energy production, rather than investing in more costly transmission lines from centralized sources outside the county. Joel Pointon from SDGE discussed how fortunate San Diego is to be the first city in the country to receive Nissan's plug-in electric car, the Leaf, as well as an infrastructure of charging stations to support it. We should also thank Richard V. Anthony for helping to bring us recycling with Zero Waste San Diego, and we should all support him with his next goal of a city wide composting service, COOL2012.

All of the speakers were engaging and together showed the breadth of sustainable initiatives in San Diego, but one in particular that captured my attention was the presentation from Alan Hoffman from Move SD. For the past five years this non-profit has been working to bring quick, effective, and affordable mass transit to San Diego that is collectively referred to as their FAST plan. This is especially appealing to me since I don't own a car. Because it is cheaper, the weather is always perfect, I live in the city, and I'd rather not contribute to a costly and harmful addiction to oil, I either walk, bike, or take the bus to get where I'm going.

So far not owning or driving a car hasn't had much of an impact on my life. Most everything I need is within a couple miles, but there are the occasional trips that remind me why not having a car in San Diego can be such a hassle. Taking the bus from North Park to La Jolla was one of these trips. Two buses and one transfer is not that hard to manage, but the hour and a half spent on those buses compared to what would have been a 20 minute car ride demonstrates the inefficiency of San Diego mass transit. Research from Move SD shows how although currently the trolley lines look great, they do a remarkably poor job of connecting areas of dense residential and commercial.

(http://www.movesandiego.org/pdf/FASTPlanFlyer090416.pdf)

Their vision for San Diego is modeled after Brisbane, Australia which uses dedicated bus roads called quickways to keep the buses out of regular traffic and always moving. Under this model there are fewer transfers, fewer stops (more express routes), and shorter wait times due to high frequency of buses. This network besides being faster than the current bus or trolley system would also be based upon researched commuting patterns, so it would be more accessible , direct, and get people closer to their destinations. Increased public transit efficiency also gets more cars off the road, improving traffic for those still driving. Even more remarkable is that the FAST plan would cost less than what SANDAG's Regional Transportation Plan has already budgeted.

The detail of research and planning Move SD has done on this project may be the most impressive thing about it. They give the impression of almost being ready to simply hand over the blueprints to the city. I hope the city is listening, and that sooner rather than later we can see some implementation of FAST. How long will it take me then to get to UCSD for the next Bright Green Future Conference? I can't say for sure, but I hope it will be enough to convince at least a few more people to leave the car in the driveway.


-Andrew
andrew@olivebranchgbs.com