Helping Haiti One Child at a Time

The nation's most delicious and eco-awesome restaurant, Pizza Fusion, continues to support relief for Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake that ravaged their capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Pizza Fusion is the proud co-sponsor of the VIP screening of "One Act of Kindness", a documentary by Cuban-American producer and actor David Noroña from NBC's Lipstick Jungle. The screening will take place at the Icon Brickell in Miami, Florida. the event is also sponsored by The Eco-Chamber, the World's first and only green Chamber of Commerce founded by Tia Diaz-Balart.

The documentary features the life-changing work of Three Angels Children's Relief, an orphanage, medical clinic and school located in Haiti. Three Angels is committed to changing the lives of 1000s in the heart of Haiti -- one child at a time -- before and after this most recent devastating earthquake.

The following day, Tuesday February 2nd, all Pizza Fusion restaurants will donating 10% of the days sales to Three Angels Children's Relief to help rebuild the orphanage which was destroyed in the recent earthquake. Please help us by spreading the word and "Donate by Dining" in one of restaurants.



Three Angels Children's Relief from David Norona on Vimeo.

Pizza Fusion Walking for Autism

Hey Everyone!  Pizza Fusion is so extremely proud to be a Silver Sponsor of this years "Walk Now For Autism" walks in Broward AND Palm Beach Florida.  We have created two teams for each respective walk and we need your support.

You don't have to work or even know who Pizza Fusion is to join the teams. You just have to have a big heart to help support a wonderful organization, Autism Speaks. We are looking to put together the largest teams in each walk and can't do it without you!

You can support us in several ways:

1. Make a Donation


2. Join our team and walk with us for Autism! (no $ needed. Click respective link below and on that page click on "Join Our Team")


3. Join our team and help raise money for Autism research


4. Visit any South Florida Pizza Fusion and make a donation by purchasing an Autism Speaks "Puzzle Piece" (100% of those purchases go directly to Autism Speaks)


5. Pass these links (below) on to a friend or business that can help make a donation


6. Re-post this note on your page or blog

Our Palm Beach walk team page: http://www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/palmbeach/pizzafusion

Our Broward walk team page: http://www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/broward/pizzafusion

PALM BEACH WALK
Date: Sunday, March 7, 2010
Location: Centennial Park at the end of Clematis Street, Downtown West Palm Beach

BROWARD WALK
Date: Saturday, April 17, 2010
Location: The Sheman Library Green, Nova Southeastern University,  Davie, Florida

Upcoming Event:
Stay tuned as we support Autism research on a nationwide scale to show our support for World Autism Awareness Day on April 2nd, 2010.  We will be donating a percentage of sales in ALL our Pizza Fusion locations in a combined effort with Autism Speaks for a "Dine to Donate" day.

On Thursday April 1st, Autism Speaks will be visiting the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to ring the opening bell to honor World Autism Awareness Day! (Market is closed on Friday 04/02)

Local Restaurant Saves the Earth...

There was recently a great news story about Pizza Fusion in Houston, Texas.  The local news station KIAH-TV, Channel 39 did an amazing job of covering the many things that make Pizza Fusion the healthiest pizza franchise on the planet.  Lisa Zazueta stopped by our organic and natural food restaurant and was given the back-stage tour with franchise owner Chris Toman and his team.

From the moment you enter Pizza Fusion you engage in the going green lifestyle of the restaurant -- for example the floor people walk on is made from reclaimed wood from their local high school basketball court.

You can see the full-story online or you can see the video below. Enjoy!



Unfortunately, she only had time to make our delicious all-natural and organic pizza, but we'll be sure to get her back to make some of our other delicious food, like our salads, sandwiches or even one of our awesome organic appetizers.

Your online personality has a carbon footprint too!

The other day I heard read my friend ask, "When will companies stop calling themselves a 'virtual company'? When will 'virtual' be normal and 'officed' not?". Then literally as I'm writing this post, I come across this article entitled, "Virtual Worlds Await: Sign up, Choose Your Avatar, Start New Life". [pause] The movie Avatar has inspired the “where no one has gone before” aspect of social networking. Under the interactive concept, you create an avatar (character) that doubles as you in the on-line world. Now if you know me, you know how passionate I can be about social media, but this "second life" stuff CREEPS ME OUT.

Then something clicked. As more and more people are moving their social lives to the web, businesses are obviously following. So if both people and businesses are now "living on the web", what does that do for pollution and climate change? Gotta be good right? Wrong. Did you know web hosting is estimated to be as polluting as the airline industry in year 2020? Me neither. Amenworld’s Olivier Djidjelli said, “Like other industries, the hosting industry has a role in the global effort to reduce levels of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere".

Very few people realize the true impact the web hosting industry has on the environment. The average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV, let alone the data center where the server is located, which consumes on average as much electricity as 30,000 households. The average website is hosted on a server which produces around 12 1/2 Tons of CO2 each year. That is a huge amount of CO2! Each year your PC produces half a ton, your car produces 5 Tons, and your home produces 6 1/2 Tons. This means on average each person is responsible for 12 Tons of the CO2 that is produced each year. About the same as each web server. SO how many web servers are out there? Well I don't know the exact number, but for starters, some have said that Google alone has upwards in the range of 500,000 servers over at least 25 locations around the world. Please correct me in the comments if you can find a source for this.

Fortunately, many web hosting companies have started to offer their clients green hosting options. So what have we done? Well, Pizza Fusion doesn't have wind turbines or wave power generators in their offices, but they have decided to go green by choosing to have PizzaFusion.com and Blog.PizzaFusion.com hosted on green servers by a company with green values (and off-setting the rest).

While energy efficient servers only produce 20% less CO2 than the average server, green web hosts have a number of options including using natural energy sources, generating their own renewable energy, using energy efficient hardware, operating an eco-friendly office, purchasing energy credits to offset their use of dirty power, or even planting a tree for every new client (website). All of these things aim to neutralize the web's affects on the environment.

As our social lives, personal lives, and business lives move to the internet, the metaphor of cloud computing is being given all new meaning. If the future is 'in the clouds', please choose green clouds over black ones. To learn more about green web hosting, feel free to drop me a line. Thanks for reading.

Going Green: Pros and Cons

My fiancé got me this really sweet "tree pad" (pictured) as a little birthday gift last week, and while some may argue it's mere production is a paradox in and of itself, yesterday at work it became the topic of progressive conversation. Conversation in the way of helping my "green" company, go even greener. So I randomly started thinking about the time four years and four jobs ago when I tried getting the company I worked for to "go green". I was four years younger and inspired by the then recent release of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. My boss seemed all for it. "Show me how it makes sense financially." Well I don't think I was determined enough to go the extra mile, 'cause at best my efforts ended shortly thereafter when I couldn't justify paying for the local recycling service to collect weekly. This trip down memory lane lead to a random google search today: going green pros and cons.

I'm honestly not surprised to find the first and only article that I click on to really get on my nerves. Now, I'm not trying to start any beef here (cause I'm a vegetarian but I ain't ******* scared of him - okay sorry I had to), but newsflash Sevastian Winters! Basically, your blog post's list of "cons" can be summed up by the following:

1) We'll all lose our jobs! (It costs too much money)

2) It takes too much time! (It costs too much money)

3) We'll all lose our jobs and go broke! (It costs too much money)

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but for the record, I didn't really read anything other than the cons section so if there's anything good in the pros, feel free to leave a comment but here are my words to you:

1) My cousin has your first name!

2) It DOESN'T cost too much MONEY to go GREEN.

3) Money is the reason you're looking at "going green" all wrong.

"Going green" is not just some marketing catch phrase or liberal trend. I remember my 6th grade science teacher talking about it and I'm pretty sure you don't want to argue with Mrs. DeCarlo. Now I skimmed a few other posts and you're a good writer. Better than I! For this reason, I befriend you and kindly encourage you to stay tuned to the Pizza Fusion blog this and next week. We plan on highlighting some key environmental AND financial benefits to businesses and consumers for "going green", along with reasons WHY Pizza Fusion has chosen some of the methods they have (hybrid cars, green web hosting, etc).

Thanks for reading and have a green day! :)