Certification
4C (Common Code for the Coffee Community)
4C began in 2004 as a multi-stakeholder code for mainstream coffee, the 'Common Code for the Coffee Community'. After a 2016 restructuring split the original association into the Global Coffee Platform and Coffee Assurance Services, 4C Services was founded in 2018 and by 2020 4C had become a fully independent third-party certification scheme. It is widely used by large roasters as a baseline requirement and its public certificate list is one of the more open registers in the sector.
- Register
- OpenAnyone can check who holds it
- Founded
- 2004
- Run by
- 4C Services GmbH (Cologne, Germany)
- Covers
- Farms, handlers and roasters
What it requires
In this atlas's own words4C is an entry-level sustainability certification for coffee (and now cocoa) that covers economic, social and environmental practice, including good agricultural practice, labour and human rights, and protection against deforestation and biodiversity loss. Certificates are issued to a Managing Entity that may oversee several producer groups ('4C Units'). Add-on modules cover carbon footprint, food security and gender equity, and Managing Entities can voluntarily undergo an EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) compliance assessment.
Checking a claim
The register
Open to the public
The 4C Portal lists all valid and recently expired or withdrawn certificates with a real-time downloadable Excel sheet, filterable by country, status, EUDR flag and commodity. Terms of reuse were not found; cite and link.
Logo use
On-pack logo rules were not captured (the logo page returned only an image); verify the 4C logo licensing rules before describing them.