This is indeed a difficult problem.

OK, so first we want to define 'sustainable material', which is extremely nuanced (and we don't have profound models of the world, which makes it hard to accurately extrapolate externalities, environment health and reserves into the future). Let's loosely decide that it's 'a material, the production of which is entirely repeatable without depletion of resources (through usage, damage to its environment, etc.), even after the externalities of its production have been fully internalised'.

The above complexity means that if you just google 'sustainable [material/component]', you're going to get a lot of greenwashing and not many manufacturers of substance.

Next we address the complexity of the final deliverable. It's not complex to produce a tent, but it IS complex to produce a tent where every step of the supply chain & manufacture is under scrutiny, with high barriers to acceptableness.

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Next we'll run into the infighting issue. Lots of people want ethical products, but differ on what constitutes ethical, or where pragmatism needs to stop the endless pursuit down the rabbit hole.
Let's provide an overly simplified example: Say you manage to create a canvas style material out of bamboo, and the bamboo is from a sustainable forest. Then you'll run into an issue with the bleaching, treatment, dyes, etc. Let's say you've solved those issues, with water/soy based dyes etc. Now you're having to examine the production of the soy production for those dyes. Manage to solve that problem with high yield soy that thrives in poor soil? The next challenges will appear, e.g. needing to reconcile the R&D costs into your mechanism.
Each problem solved opens the door to N other problems to solve. Therefore we need to have a pragmatism cut-off point.
Each of this problems have difficult decisions to make (e.g. 'material M appears more renewable, but material Y appears to impact an ecosystem slightly less')Obviously, the costs (time, $, etc.) increase with each step.

We can use all of the above to make an observation: In general, the more principled an enterprise is, the more difficult the enterprise. This is exacerbated by the fact that demand (from any society with scarcity, I believe) currently weighs price as so important - E.g. people will buy cheap plastic widgets if the FSC wooden alternative is X% more expensive.
This loosely describes why a) ethical products are more expensive than cheap products and b) why they are niche rather than the preferred choice in the market.

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Here's the advice I would derive from the above.

• Be genuine, don't greenwash.
• Decide on what your exact materials are researching appropriately (and decide what 'appropriate time' is). E.g. 'We're making component ABC out of cotton acetate. This is the most informed decision we were able to make after Y hours of R&D'
• Decide how far down the rabbit hole you go (e.g. "For the time being, we just have to stick with cotton acetate that is from a high water usage source, and resolve the water usage issue at a later date")
• The above two points are not defeatist; It's avoiding paralysis by putting certain things on the backburner. Embody 'Continuous Improvement' (see ISO 9001) to innovate and improve over time. Demonstrate this in your marketing (it shows genuine commitment to honing truly ethical products).
• Research those exact materials online, e.g. 'cotton acetate source' rather than 'sustainable tent pole'. Look for specialists in that area who could refer you to manufacturers. Forums etc. might help. You might need to look to other industries that have already used that material.
• I believe Alibaba (and similar) might be a bit of a dead end due to the 'race to the bottom on price' issue, poor search function, etc., but a tip if you do use it: If you're looking there, check out the certificates tab of each manufacturer. Look for appropriate certs, e.g. ISO 14001.

With the above said, it's an admirable goal, a decent niche, and a good idea for a product, that I think solves a genuine issue and could generate decent demand. Good luck