Deck the halls, but not the landfill! We get ready for Christmas with one of Shropshire's 'zero waste' pioneers

Happily though, this doesn’t mean that any of us need to let our environmental consciousness go out of the window, and luckily our county is home to the perfect business to guide us. 

The Little Green Pantry is an eco-friendly ‘zero waste’ refill business, specialising in food, bathroom and cleaning products. 

Having been based exclusively on Crown Street in Wellington for the last four years, it is now also up and running in Newport Market after announcing expansion plans earlier this year.

Owner Keli King said the move is a ‘return to the roots’ of the business, which began as a pop-up market stall operation working from markets in Telford and Newport in 2019, before moving to more permanent premises in Wellington in 2021.

“I’m so glad to be back, people have been very welcoming and we’re already making connections with Sustainable Newport and other eco-friendly businesses because we really want to make a difference to the town again,” she said. “In 2019 I did a couple of pop-up stalls here in Newport Market which were really successful.

“But unfortunately after that point we hit Covid and things kind of ground to a halt here.”

The Little Green Pantry aims to help households to reduce their environmental impact through “conscious, refill-based shopping”, with its products either supplied loose for customers to take home in their own containers, or in recyclable or reusable packaging.

The company has grown to employ a team of seven staff who run both the shop and the business’ external events and has won a range of other awards for its sustainability and innovation – including ‘Green Start-up of the Year’ in last year’s UK Startup Awards.

With Christmas now almost upon us, Keli and the team have been delighting customers with a variety of environmentally-friendly Christmas cake kits, including refillable, vegan and gluten-free options.

“This is the fourth year for our Christmas cake kits,” she said. “They’re kits where you get all of the ingredients that you need for your Christmas cake (except the alcohol). They’re all weighed out for you in refillable glass jars or paper bags. 

“The ingredients that we stock are local, often coming from Wellington Market, and in Newport we use Newport businesses. So we try to complement the whole set with local business produce.”

This year, particularly, the kits have been selling like, well… hot cakes.

“They’re selling really well,” said Keli. “By the start of November we’d done about 120 and we normally go right up until Christmas Eve selling them, so we’re expecting this year to be a record year, which would be fantastic.”

As Keli relates, love for the kits has become embedded in the area around Wellington, and they have become part of the festive furniture for a number of local residents.

“They’ve become part of people’s family traditions now,” she said. “We get sent lots of photos of people making the cakes with their kids. It’s become something that some families do every year now and it’s really nice to be part of.”

This Christmas, The Little Green Pantry is also bringing the spirit of Santa to Shropshire with its range of sustainable gifts – from bamboo socks to plantable items that can be enjoyed long after Yuletide. Hot mulled punch is also available for shoppers looking to enjoy their retail therapy with a scrumptious Christmas beverage.

However, embracing the festive season is hardly a new thing for Keli, who back in 2023 spearheaded the ‘Love Wellington Christmas Video’, featuring over two dozen community figures and business owners from around the market town.

With participants lip-syncing and dancing to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, it was a fun, festive bid to show people what Wellington has to offer.

“We all pulled together to spread some Christmas cheer and encourage people to shop at the small businesses in Wellington,” said Keli. She has approached other traders through a WhatsApp group led by Wellington advocacy group Love Wellington – and most of them got enthusiastically behind the idea.

“I think it showed we were all up for putting ourselves out there, having a laugh and welcoming people to Wellington,” Keli added. Though no repeat performance is following this year, Keli has been enthusiastically welcoming people to her own workshops rather than Santa’s.

Committed to helping people not only eat sustainably but also clean sustainably, Keli and the team have spent 2025 leading workshops for keen, eco-conscious locals.

“This is a new thing that we’ve been doing this year,” she said. “We’ve been working with people who are very interested in reducing all of the chemicals in their home and their cleaning products. 

“There’s a book that we sell a lot of copies of called Clean & Green, by Nancy Birtwhistle. She was a Bake Off winner years ago but now she does eco-friendly cleaning tips. That book is a Sunday Times bestseller.

“From that we’ve had people wanting to buy all these things that she uses. They’re all just natural powders and traditional home remedies – conkers for laundry liquid, lemons for cleaning your chopping board, things like that.

“I was getting asked about sustainable cleaning by a lot of people, so I thought, I’ll create a workshop teaching people about it. Following the first couple, I had quite a lot of interest – including from a school in Shrewsbury – and it’s gone on from there.”

Now gearing up for the new year, Keli is keen to take bookings from anyone interested in finding out more about how they can change their habits to help the planet.

“Our cleaning workshops are perfect for community groups, charities, and businesses looking to inspire healthier, eco-friendly habits,” she said. “Each session explores the benefits of switching to natural ingredients while guiding attendees through creating their own effective, planet-friendly products to take home.

“We’re looking to grow these next year, and also look at doing talks on eco-friendly beauty treatments. There’re a few things we’ve got in the pipeline.” 

With focus for 2026 on the new Newport store as well as her workshops, Keli is more driven than ever to take her message of zero-waste shopping and sustainability as far afield as possible.

“At our Newport store we’ve got a range of our best-selling items which we know do really well in Wellington, but we’re ever-expanding and we’re taking lots of feedback on what Newport customers want,” she said.

“We’re also expanding our range of refillable products to make sure people can shop sustainably in Newport and well as in Wellington.

“We just want to spread the message of sustainable living further out of Telford. 

“We want people to be able to come into Wellington and Newport and do their shopping sustainably, and get people into really good habits for the benefit of the planet.”

For more information, and to get your Christmas cake kit for this year, visit www.thelittlegreenpantry.co.uk/ or pop in to the Wellington and Newport stores at 2 Crown Street Wellington and Newport Indoor Market.