Lodestone Green Claims – Greenwashing Checker

Description

Green claims are now a lot more dangerous to write badly. Directive (EU) 2024/825 —
the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, or EmpCo — adds new practices to
Annex I of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive: the list of things that are prohibited in all
circumstances, with no need to show that any consumer was actually misled. Member States apply them
from 27 September 2026, and there is no transition period.

This plugin scans your posts, pages and WooCommerce products for the wording those rules cover, tells
you which prohibition each one engages, and stores what you can actually demonstrate.

It is not a word list

That distinction is the whole point. The Directive does not prohibit words. Under Article 2(p), a
claim is generic — and therefore caught by point 4a — only where “the specification of the claim is
not provided in clear and prominent terms on the same medium”. Recital 9 names the “online selling
interface” as an example of a medium.

So these two are the same word and different legal objects:

• “Eco-friendly.” — generic.
• “Eco-friendly: the packaging is 100% post-consumer card.” — specified.

This plugin checks for the specification, tells you which signal it found, and leaves the judgement
of whether it is clear and prominent to you. A plugin that scores those two identically is grepping,
not screening.

What it checks

• Point 4a — generic environmental claims without recognised excellent environmental performance.
• Point 4c — climate claims that rest on offsetting. Nothing on file answers this one, and the
  plugin says so instead of offering you a certificate that would not help.
• Point 2a — sustainability labels, badges and seals with no certification scheme behind them.
• Point 4b — whole-product claims that apply to only one aspect.
• Point 10a — legal requirements presented as a distinctive feature.
• Article 6(2)(d) — claims about future environmental performance without a verified plan. This
  one is assessed case by case rather than blacklisted, and the plugin labels it that way.

What the free version does, permanently

• Scan every post, page and WooCommerce product on the site. No page limit, no scan quota, no
  expiry, nothing switched off later.
• All six prohibitions, and all seven claim vocabularies: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian,
  Dutch and Portuguese. Every one of them scans in the free version — detection is never limited by
  language.
• The specification test on every finding, naming what it found alongside the claim.
• Content is re-checked whenever it is saved, drafts included, so a fix shows up the moment you make it.
• Substantiation records — an EU Ecolabel licence, an EN ISO 14024 Type I scheme, another EU-law
  basis, the certification scheme behind a label, or the verified implementation plan behind a
  claim about future performance. Created once and applied wherever the wording appears, because a
  shop with three hundred organic cotton shirts has one certificate, not three hundred.
• Brand-name exclusions, so a shop called Green Valley Farms is not flagged on every page it has.
• Rule on any finding — accept it or dismiss it as a false positive — with a written reason recorded
  against your name and the date.

What Pro adds

Pro is for businesses that have to prove it later: a dated dossier of what each page said and what
backed it, printable per page, and every finding with its ruling exportable as CSV; history built
only from figures frozen when each scan ran; a warning before a certificate expires, and the
findings it was covering reopened the day after its expiry date; background re-scans; a per-language
coverage matrix for Polylang and WPML; and WP-CLI.

The snapshots and the rulings are written by the free version from the day you install it. Buy a
licence a year from now and a year of evidence is waiting, not an empty screen.

Your content never leaves your server

Every rule, every word list and every decision runs locally. Your product copy is never transmitted
anywhere to be checked. There is no account, no API key, and no lexicon downloaded from anywhere.

The plugin’s own code makes no network requests at all. The one component that can is the Freemius
SDK bundled for licensing, and only when you do something that needs it: opening the upgrade page
(which fetches current prices from Freemius, and whose checkout is Freemius’), buying or activating a
licence, choosing to opt in, or sending the optional feedback form when you deactivate. None of
those sends your content.

One notice. That is the whole budget.

This plugin shows exactly one dismissible admin notice, ever, and it retires itself as soon as you
open the plugin. No banners, no countdown pressure, no nags on other people’s screens, one top-level
menu, and nothing installed or suggested that you did not ask for.

The one thing not in our hands is that opening the upgrade page loads the Freemius checkout and
adds a Freemius “Upgrade” item under the menu while you are on it.

Technical details