IT suppliers are coming under increased pressure from buyers to be more environmentally savvy about their products and services.

IT users discussing the topic at a recent Corporate IT Forum workshop - all large companies intent on ‘greening’ their IT operations - agreed that IT suppliers needed to give them more facts about how much carbon has gone into making their products.

The thumb screws are being tightened and some tough questions, it would seem, are being asked.

Participating in the event, one IT professional, responsible for sustainable computing within their organisation said: “If you’re asking questions of your suppliers, even if none of them can answer those questions, the fact that you’re asking the questions means they’ll have to start thinking about them.”

Another IT chief said: “We’ve been asking quite a lot of detail about recyclability, content of hazardous materials, and they don’t have the information to hand, but I suspect next time I do, they’ll have looked it up.”

The event, Green IT: From talking to taking action, featured senior IT professionals from 18 large companies - all FTSE 100/250 - sharing their best practice expertise around the practical measures they were putting in place to green their IT departments. Forum subscribers can download the full report from the event here.

The group revealed that some suppliers have been excluded from bidding processes because they have not met a company’s tough green standards or demonstrated enough knowledge about how green their products are.

Others revealed that they can struggle to get the right information from their suppliers. One strategy manager said: “Sure, suppliers will say a lot of things in the tender, lots of green fluffy stuff, lots of marketing, but you try and contract to it. Contracting is one sure way to embed it into your organisation. But boy is it difficult.”

Another revealed: “We completed a hardware tender at the beginning of the year and we asked that kind of question. And all of the suppliers were ready to give an answer, but they weren’t ready to give any detail, or any meat of where they were. And it was very much around how they as an organisation were going to be green, rather than about their products.”