The coffee industry's ambitious effort to better align and communicate its myriad sustainability programs gained momentum in March when the Global Coffee Platform recognized the in-house systems of four major green coffee companies: Louis Dreyfus Company, Mercon Coffee Group, Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, and Volcafe.
Approval means that their schemes are now rated as equivalent to the GCP's own "Coffee Sustainability Reference Code (Coffee SR Code), 2nd party assurance," an upgrade to its predecessor program, the Coffee Baseline Code. The Coffee SR Code covers the economic, social and environmental sides of green coffee production and primary processing.
"Second party" in this context refers to corporate programs, as distinct from the third-party certification schemes of public-sector and independent groups like Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International. The second-party assurance helps ensure that corporate certifications are as rigorous and transparent as third-party schemes.
The new announcement follows GCP's move in November to upgrade its sustainability harmonization tool, which compares one scheme to another, to make it stricter in terms of its sustainability and operational requirements. The new iteration is called the Equivalence Mechanism, 2.0.
“This commitment to the use of a common language and the increasing openness to transparency is a critical feature to understand, advance and accelerate coffee sustainability,” said Annette Pensel, executive director GCP.
In assessing the corporate schemes against its own criteria, the GCP partnered with the International Trade Center. The addition of the new company programs brings the GCP's total count of recognized second-party schemes to 13.
Under the equivalence process GCP requires each company to publish the scope, objectives, and strategies of its sustainability schemes as well as its benchmarks and assessment system. Before the GCP got involved, companies kept most of this information to themselves. That made it hard to compare them to independent and public-sector certification programs, which, by definition, reveal their data.
The SR Code goes beyond the GCP's "Baseline" code, under which six corporate programs had already been recognized:
- SMS Verified, by ECOM
- Enveritas Gold, and Enveritas Green, by Envirtas
- Guaxupé Planet, by Exportadora de Café Guaupé
- AAA, by Nespresso
- NKG Bloom, by Neumann Kaffee Gruppe
- AtSource Entry Verified and AtSource Plus, by ofi
The baseline code also recognizes five third-party schemes:
- 4C
- Certifica Minas (of Minas Gerais State, Brazil)
- Fairtrade
- Rainforest/UTZ
- Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices (with Conservation International)
The roasters and retailers that are recognized under GCP can be included in the annual GCP Collective Reporting on Sustainable Coffee Purchases.