A NEW Brampton-based shop has opened online with the aim of making it easier to live an environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

Ria-plenish started life as a stall at the Brampton Market but has now moved online with the market postponed by the lockdown.

The online shop’s owner Maria Stundon has high hopes for the eco-friendly business and wants to move it into a physical shop in the future.

Maria, 32, said: “I didn’t think I was doing enough as an individual. I wanted to be able to be a platform for information and help others make that change.

“With being in a small town, there isn’t much option for that kind of thing and it’s great that people are making the small changes, that’s what we need.

“If we can do it on a bigger scale as a community, that would definitely be very beneficial.”

Maria glided into the sustainable lifestyle at first by initially going vegetarian. She then began to educate herself on sustainability and the environment.

“I started to look into the benefits on the environment by not eating meat and with that came the single-use plastic and obviously the climate change movement was kicking off back then,” she said.

“I just started to look into more of what our own impact was having on the environment so I decided to make my own little changes, like using reuseable water bottles and bringing bags to the store.”

At the moment, she is stocking items that will help people make small changes in their lifestyles to move towards more sustainable living.

In the online store there are reusable bowl covers, bamboo toothbrushes, reusable food wraps, and cotton make-up pads to name a few.

However, Maria wants to be able to offer more than household essentials, and wants to open a zero-waste refill store.

“When you look at the statistics, the amount of waste in the UK is scary,” she said.

“When you are only thinking about yourself and thinking ‘oh, I am only chucking away that one bottle of washing up liquid every two weeks’ but when you total it up for the whole of the UK and then the whole World, it’s just a massive impact.

“To be able to have alternatives for no packaging or reusable packaging is definitely beneficial and the way to go.”