The Pledge:

A common code for transparency reporting in green coffee buying

Our Intentions

  • Give any participant in the coffee supply chain the opportunity to sign on and help create a transparency movement.
  • Help signatory individuals and companies create a “community of best practice” and set an example for the entire coffee industry.
  • Avoid co-optation by non-committed actors by requiring participants to state the percentage of transparent coffees in relation to the total business volume.
  • Signatory individuals and companies must commit to a goal of increasing transparency reporting until all coffees bought by an individual company are reported with all information stated in this Commitment.

Our Vision

  • Ensure a sustainable supply of coffee by working towards a living income for producers so they will continue to invest in the future of their businesses.
  • Transparent reporting enables actors along the supply chain to make informed choices. This will help the industry to raise prices paid to farmers and provide living incomes in coffee producing countries.
  • Transparency about Free On Board (FOB) Prices is a first step. We encourage all companies and actors along the supply chain to make prices transparent at every step of the supply chain.
  • Transparency is a tool to ensure that marketing claims are backed by actual facts.

Our Commitment

  • We will create transparency data that is publicly available and easily accessible;
  • state the producer/producer organization the coffee was purchased from;
  • state the Free On Board (FOB) price paid for the coffee;
  • indicate the quality of the coffee, for instance by using the SCA score in order to indicate cup quality;
  • state the lot size (volume) of the coffee purchased;
  • state the length of the relationship between producer/producer organization and buyer;
  • state the percentage of transparent coffees in relation to the total volume of coffee (in lbs/tonnes) sold in the stated year.

Companies that sign this pledge publish the required information about at least one of the coffees they are selling. If the published information is called into question, companies that signed this contract agree to share a randomly selected number of green coffee contracts with other participants in order to verify information published in the transparency reports (peer review).

Our Signatories

Our Supporters

Authors of The Pledge:

Jonas Lorenz
Andreas “Pingo” Felsen
Meredith Taylor
Peter Dupont
Geoff Watts
Nadine Heymann
Alexandra Urban
Sebastian Simsch

Individual Supporters:

Sven Ostendorf – Germany
Laura LaPlante – United States
Eleonora Ignazzi – Italy
Thomas Riethmüller – Germany
Poh&KY, Lonely Crowd – Malaysia
Sadek Ghossein – Egypt
Ole Kristian Bøen – Norway
Zekeriya Kagan KAYA – Turkey