Staufenwald for WooCommerce

Description

Your shop promises “we plant trees” – this plugin turns that into a verifiable statement: real trees on the Swabian Alb in Germany, each with a fixed location, a publicly verifiable certificate and a public company-forest page where any customer can see what actually grew out of their order.

The plugin and its admin interface are written in German, as the Staufenwald planting program is aimed at shops in the German-speaking market.

Who publishes this — Staufenwald and AOS Digital are two brands of the same business: a German sole proprietorship owned by Hans-Jörg Andonovic-Wagner, Fleischerstraße 30, 73054 Eislingen, VAT ID DE211525220. The imprints of staufenwald.de and aos-digital.de show the identical owner, address, phone number and VAT ID. Staufenwald is the reforestation program; AOS Digital is the software side of the same business, which is why this plugin is published from that account. It is not affiliated with WooCommerce or Automattic.

How it works

  1. Set your rule, for example “one tree per €20 of order value” – with an optional minimum cart value, a per-order cap and an optional monthly budget.
  2. On every completed payment the plugin reports the order number and amount to staufenwald.de; the trees are calculated and collected server-side. Refunds are deducted, partial refunds individually.
  3. Once a month you receive a statement over the total at the volume price of that month. After payment the trees are planted and grow in your company forest – with certificate and coordinates.

What your shop gets

  • A badge/block “This shop has planted 132 real trees” linking to your public company forest.
  • A note on the thank-you page and in the order confirmation email (“This order will grow approximately 3 trees …”).
  • A marketing claim that holds up: concrete, true, verifiable – instead of generic carbon-neutral claims, which the EU Empowering Consumers Directive bans from 27 September 2026 when based on offsetting.

Privacy first

  • Only the order number, amount, currency and timestamp are transmitted. No names, no addresses, no email addresses – the endpoint actively rejects unknown fields.
  • The badge renders entirely locally: your customers’ browsers never make a single request to staufenwald.de.
  • Reporting runs in the background via Action Scheduler – nobody at checkout ever waits for a third-party API.

Honestly stated

  • Trees are planted during planting season (autumn/spring), not on the day of the order – every text the plugin ships says so explicitly.
  • Always rounded down, never up: the promise to your customers is never bigger than what gets planted.
  • Only EUR orders are counted.
  • You need a (free) Staufenwald business account; you only pay for the trees that were actually counted, monthly in arrears, with no base fee.

External services

This plugin connects your shop to staufenwald.de, a reforestation program on the Swabian Alb operated from Eislingen, Germany. On every counted order or refund it transmits:

  • the order reference (e.g. “wc-1042”), the amount in cents, the currency, a timestamp and the event type (order/refund)
  • during setup and on connection tests: the calculation rule you chose

No personal data of your customers is transmitted; the endpoint rejects unknown fields with an error. Transmission only happens after you enter your API key and serves the fulfilment of your contract with Staufenwald (counting, planting and billing trees).

Service: https://staufenwald.de · Privacy policy: https://staufenwald.de/datenschutz

Screenshots

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

  • Staufenwald Trees

Installation

  1. Install and activate the plugin – the setup assistant opens automatically.
  2. Create an API key in your Staufenwald business account (staufenwald.de/portal/partner) and enter it in the assistant; click “Verbindung testen” (test connection).
  3. Set your rule, choose the display options, done. Place the badge via the “Staufenwald-Bäume” block or the shortcode [staufenwald_baeume].

FAQ

How is this different from other tree-planting plugins?

Most tree plugins sell certificates from international offset projects. This one plants on a single, named reforestation site (Kuchalb near Donzdorf, Germany) that you can visit, links every shop to a public company forest page with its own counter, and hands out per-statement certificates with GPS coordinates. Technically it stays out of your storefront: no external scripts, no tracking, the badge renders from a local cache, and no personal customer data ever leaves your shop.

Is this the official Staufenwald plugin?

Yes. Staufenwald and AOS Digital are the same business — one sole proprietorship, one owner (Hans-Jörg Andonovic-Wagner, Eislingen, Germany), one VAT ID (DE211525220), as the imprints on both sites show. Staufenwald runs the planting program, AOS Digital is its software side. There is no other Staufenwald plugin, and the API this connects to is operated by that same business.

Is it GDPR-compliant?

Yes, by design: only the order number, order total, currency and a timestamp are transmitted, no names, addresses or email addresses (see External services). The plugin registers a suggested text for your privacy policy under Settings Privacy, and your customers’ browsers never contact staufenwald.de.

What does it cost?

The plugin is free. You only pay for trees that were actually counted, monthly in arrears, at the volume price of the monthly quantity (net; current price list at staufenwald.de/firmen/preise). No subscription, no base fee; cancel by deactivating.

What happens on refunds?

Every refund is reported and deducted from the monthly total – partial refunds individually. In total, never more is deducted than the order counted.

Do my customers wait at checkout for the transmission?

No. Reporting runs after the payment in the background, with automatic retries on network problems. If staufenwald.de is unreachable, your shop does not notice; missed orders can be re-reported with one click.

May I advertise with this?

With concrete statements, yes: “We planted X trees near Donzdorf, here are the coordinates” is verifiable – the certificates are publicly checkable. Generic claims like “carbon-neutral shop” become inadmissible in the EU from 2026-09-27 when based on offsetting; this plugin does not issue any climate label and is no substitute for one.

When are the trees planted?

During planting season (autumn and spring) on the Kuchalb reforestation area near Donzdorf, Baden-Württemberg. The certificate is issued with the monthly statement; GPS coordinates follow with the planting.

Does it work with HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage)?

Yes. The plugin exclusively uses the WooCommerce APIs and declares compatibility explicitly.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Staufenwald for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

1.0.2

  • Changed: the ownership statement now says what is actually the case — Staufenwald and AOS Digital are the same sole proprietorship, with one owner, one address and one VAT ID. The previous wording (“contracted developer, with agreement”) described the relationship far more weakly than it is.
  • Fixed: the notice about failed reports appeared on every admin screen and could not be dismissed. It now shows only on the dashboard, the plugins list, WooCommerce screens and the plugin’s own page, and it is dismissible (guideline 11).

1.0.1

  • Added: the plugin registers with the AOS Hub (version and a link to its WooCommerce settings tab).
  • Added: a footer line on the plugin’s own settings screen — Staufenwald and the company forest, with AOS Digital named as plugin support. Nothing on the shop front end beyond the badge you place yourself.
  • Changed: four translation-tooling files no longer ship in the package.

1.0.0

  • First release: setup assistant with live connection test, rule with live example calculation, background queue with retries, per-refund deduction, badge (block + shortcode), thank-you page and email line, re-report function.