Vaglio Asserzioni Ambientali

Description

From 27 September 2026 Directive (EU) 2024/825 bans generic environmental
claims across the European Union: “eco-friendly”, “green”, “sustainable”,
“zero impact” and their variants, when nothing next to them backs them up. It
also bans climate neutrality claims based on offsetting and sustainability
labels made up in-house. In Italy the directive is transposed by Legislative
Decree 30/2026 into article 23 of the Consumer Code, and the competition
authority (AGCM) enforces it with the fines of article 27.

The practical problem is that nobody rereads three hundred product pages by
hand. The plugin does it for you: it reads the texts, finds the sentences that
fall under the ban and for each one shows the sentence, the reason, the
article of law and how to fix it
.

The rules read Italian text. The ban is European, but the dictionary of
each language has to be written on real sentences in that language, and for
Italian thousands of them have been collected and classified. The admin screens
are in English and Italian.

What it does

  • Checks the content open in the editor while you type, and jumps to the
    flagged sentence
  • Scans the whole site in batches, remembers what it found and tells new
    findings apart from those already seen and those fixed
  • Reads the SEO title and description from Yoast SEO, Rank Math and SEOPress,
    and the alt text of images
  • Adds a “Claims” column to the lists of products, pages and posts
  • Has a page where you can paste any text and see it checked
  • Treats a claim that sits next to a real certification (EU Ecolabel, FSC,
    PEFC, GOTS, Oeko-Tex, EU Organic, Blauer Engel, Nordic Swan) as “to verify”
    instead of banned
  • Quotes the right law: article 23 of the Italian Consumer Code for Italy, the
    points of Annex I to the directive for the other EU countries

What it does not do

  • It does not tell whether a qualification is true. “50% recycled” is
    marked “to verify” even if that 50% is made up: only you know that
  • It never says “compliant”. No report from this plugin is a certificate of
    compliance, and a missed finding is no guarantee
  • It is not legal advice. It flags according to written, stated rules; the
    judgement on a real case belongs to a lawyer
  • It does not change anything. It shows what to fix and leaves the writing
    to you
  • It does not send your texts anywhere. The rules are inside the plugin and
    run on your server. No outbound calls, no keys, no third party services

What it checks by default

Products and pages. Blog posts start switched off and can be turned on in the
settings: the ban covers commercial communication, and a post about the
environment rarely is.

Classes of findings

  • Generic: an environmental term with nothing in the sentence to back it.
    Banned by article 23, letter d-bis (Annex I, point 4a)
  • To verify: the term is tied to a material, a standard or a certificate.
    Lawful if the qualification is true
  • Offsetting: climate neutrality or zero emissions obtained through
    offsetting. Banned by letter d-quater (Annex I, point 4c)

Who makes it

Ing. Massimiliano Brasile, an engineer registered with the Order of Engineers
of the Province of Rome. Product page and contacts at
brasile.pro.

Screenshots

Installation

  1. Install and activate the plugin
  2. Open Environmental claims in the WordPress menu
  3. In Settings, choose which law to cite and which content types to check
  4. In Scan the site, run the first scan over the whole site

It needs WordPress 6.4 and PHP 8.1. WooCommerce is not required: without it, the plugin checks pages and posts.

FAQ

Does the plugin send my texts to an external service or to an AI?

No. The rules are a dictionary inside the plugin and run in PHP on your server.
The plugin makes no outbound calls.

If the plugin flags nothing, am I compliant?

No, and nobody can tell you that. The plugin checks the texts it is given
against stated rules: it does not read images, does not open attached PDFs,
does not judge videos, and does not know whether what you write is true.

Why does it flag a sentence I think is fine?

Because the rule looks at the shape of the sentence, not at your line of
business. If a wording is yours and you can already back it up, add it to the
wording to stop flagging in the settings: the check keeps working on
everything else.

Why does it not check my blog posts?

Because by default it checks products and pages. If your posts sell
something, turn them on in the settings.

Is it only for Italy?

No. The ban comes from Directive (EU) 2024/825 and applies across the EU from
27 September 2026; Legislative Decree 30/2026 is the Italian transposition.
The plugin quotes the Italian Consumer Code if the shop country is Italy, and
the points of Annex I to the directive otherwise.

Who can run the scan?

The check in the editor, the column and the check page are for anyone who can
edit content. The whole-site scan reads every product, page and post, drafts
and private ones included, so it is for users who can edit other people’s
content: administrators, editors and shop managers.

What does the plugin store?

The whole-site scan keeps what it finds (the sentence, the wording, the content
it comes from and its state) in a table of its own in your database, so the
next scan can tell new findings from old ones. Deactivating the plugin keeps
the table and the settings; uninstalling deletes them. The check in the editor
and the check page store nothing.

Does it check texts in English, French, German or Spanish?

Not yet. The rules of a language are written on real sentences in that
language, and for now only Italian has that work behind it. Other languages
will follow once the same work is done for them.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Vaglio Asserzioni Ambientali” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

0.2.0

  • Fix: the text inside shortcodes is now checked. Before, the text inside a
    registered shortcode (page builders such as WPBakery or Divi 4, Shortcodes
    Ultimate, many themes) was dropped before the check, so those pages looked
    clean without having been read.
  • Shortcode attributes are no longer read: a color=”green” is not a claim.

0.1.0

  • First release: Italian rules, check inside the editor, whole site scan,
    column in the lists, check page, settings.