ParkHowell.com

After eight years at St. Brendan’s Catholic School in Bothell, Wa, I graduated to a public junior high.  With this exquisite new freedom came shop class.  I couldn’t believe you could spend an hour with the most dangerous, digit-lopping tools around and get an elective credit for it.  After inadvertently grinding down the ends of my pointer and middle fingers on both hands on the radial sander, I discovered the gnarliest of woodworking machines: the lathe.  To my amazement this guy steps up, pinches a two-foot long, 4×4 pine post end-to-end into the apparatus, cranked it up to something like 3 million revolutions per second, guided the metal awl into place, and the wood chunks flew. I couldn’t wait to get my Bandaided mitts on it.  But what to make?

A baseball bat!  That’d be easy.

The next day I went to work.  I felt like a mad scientist, or a beaver on steroids, as the lathe whirred and the bark flew. Before I knew it, I had my new hand-carved bat.  It was heavier than most, and the handle could’ve used a bigger knob on the end.  And I suppose I would’ve avoided a few splinters had I bothered to sand it, (but sanding just brought back bad memories).  Then my buddy Paul and I took it out for a swing.  Literally. I was hitting the crap out of the ball with my creation, probably because it was a good eight ounces heavier than anything in the city league and Paul was lobbying me softballs.

That night I took my new bat to our baseball game and asked coach Ressler to move me up in the line-up. Proudly, I showed him my secret weapon, the Parkville Slugger, and winked. He took a good, hard look, and with a twisted grin said, “You’re in.” In hindsight, I think he moved me into the clean-up spot to add to his lore as a coach that cultivated the most ridiculous stories about his players for later use as a crusty old codger on a barstool.  He knew what was coming. I stepped up to the plate and that pitcher blew three fastballs by me like Yankee great, Allie “Super Chief” Reynolds. The girth of that bat left my shoulder only AFTER to the thump of each ball reported from the catcher’s mitt.

Walking back to the dugout, it hit me. The equipment doesn’t make the player. You can’t carve yourself into being a big hitter. This is a concept that resonates with me today in my golf game, which brings me to my question: Can an electronics firm design their own eco-friendly logo, slap it on their “energy efficient” products, and sell it with a straight face?

That’s exactly what Fujitso has done.  Their website reads:

“This label gives a clear indication of a product’s green credentials, helping our customers make an informed and clear decision when purchasing and acting as immediate and visible proof of the fact that our products are designed with our far-reaching corporate goals on energy efficiency and sustainability.”

Their timing is pretty good.  The Consumer Electronics Association, which just released a study of consumer purchasing habits, indicates that 33 percent of consumers say they expect to make some type of green CE purchase within the next two years.

According to the study, price and features continue to be the primary purchase drivers for CE products, but green attributes will increasingly be a factor. In fact, 53 percent of consumers say they would be willing to pay some type of premium for televisions with green attributes.

Effectively communicating the green attributes of CE products continues to be an obstacle for manufacturers in particular. Though the study indicates high consumer awareness of logos like EPA’s ENERGY STAR^®, the absence of a single indicator for other “green” attributes leads to consumer confusion. The study finds consumers desire an easy way to determine if a product meets environmental standards, such as logos and descriptions printed on the product packaging.

Fujitso isn’t wasting anytime swinging their shiny new green bat.  They’ve already ranked 33 of their products with their Green IT logo. Granted, you’ve got to give them credit for not waiting around for the government or the Green Electronics Council to rate their products.  They’ve taken that job on themselves.  And even though they may be doing it with the best of intentions, it’s still hard to give much credence to a self-subscribed green labeling effort.  They’ve designed a nice logo and program behind it, but does their product step up to the plate?

This kind of hutzpah makes me want to go out to the garage and finish sanding the old Parkville Slugger.