As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly find sustainable suppliers for your business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a spreadsheet and create columns for supplier name, website, product fit, price, delivery, sustainability claim, named standard or certificate, evidence link, evidence date, missing information and follow-up status.
   2. Gather your product specification, required quantity, delivery location, budget, lead time, exclusion list and the sustainability criteria your business will actually use.
   3. Paste those details into the prompt and run it in a chatbot with web access, asking it to use current public sources and to mark every unsupported claim as unverified.
   4. Copy the shortlisted suppliers and source links into the spreadsheet, then open each supplier website and read the linked certificate, policy or audit evidence rather than relying on the supplier summary.
   5. Email the remaining suppliers the same questions about certification, materials, labour standards, packaging, delivery, availability and evidence, and record their replies beside the AI research.
   6. Compare the replies and documents against your mandatory criteria, remove suppliers with missing or contradictory evidence, request quotes from the survivors and send the final comparison to the person responsible for approving the purchase.

   Prompt

   Act as a UK procurement research assistant. Find potential suppliers for this requirement:
   
   Product or service: [describe it]
   Required quantity: [quantity and ordering frequency]
   Delivery location: [UK location]
   Maximum budget or target price: [amount or range]
   Required delivery date or lead time: [requirement]
   Sustainability priorities: [for example recycled content, repairability, renewable energy, low packaging, local production, ethical labour or lower emissions]
   Mandatory standards or certifications: [list them, or write none]
   Suppliers to exclude: [list them, or write none]
   
   Return a table of up to 10 UK or UK-serving suppliers with these columns: supplier name, website, relevant product or service, location, stated sustainability claims, named certifications or standards, evidence links, likely fit, missing information and questions to ask. Use current public sources where available. Do not invent suppliers, certifications, prices, stock, delivery times or sustainability claims. Separate facts supported by a source from your own assessment. Treat a supplier's marketing claim as unverified unless the claim is supported by a named standard, certificate, audit, policy or other specific evidence. Do not call a supplier sustainable solely because it uses words such as green, ethical or eco-friendly. Rank the suppliers against my requirements, explain the ranking, and finish with a short due-diligence checklist before I request quotes or place an order. State clearly where you could not verify something.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.