The standard templates for federal, state and local government tender applications increasingly include a requirement to discuss environmental management systems and processes under which the tendered work will be carried out.

The response to this has been that many firms now have an ISO 14001 compliant environmental management policy in place. Unfortunately the net benefit of systems like this are hard to quantify, and even an informed tenders assessor may still only have a vague appreciation of a firm’s environmental credentials based on this certification.

The reason for this is that process-based standards (like ISO 14001) do not set absolute environmental benchmarks for firms to live up to. The (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) example is that in theory a pirate whaling ship could have ISO 14001 accreditation, provided it had environmental management systems in place.

Carbon Neutral status (as an absolute or “performance” standard) makes a much stronger impression on the reader.

It is well recognised that tenders are (in practice) often decided on price, credibility and the tenderer’s inclusions. However the ability to dominate any one decision category (such as through being the only Carbon Neutral provider) may be enough in and of itself to get a tender though the first “weeding out” round that occurs with any large tender process.

Intuitively, with large or high value tenders this can be the hardest round of screening to pass, and as such, being carbon neutral may offer a significant advantage to firms that are new to a particular marketspace or do not have track record with a particular client.

(This section is excerpted from “Green Business: How to use Carbon Neutral Status to Increase Market Share, Add Value to Products or Services (and Win More Government Tenders)” ).