If you want to do your part to help fight climate change, try adapting to a greener lifestyle. A green lifestyle refers to making more environmentally conscious choices in your everyday life. While this occasionally requires some minor sacrifices in comfort, the benefits are well worth the effort. Additionally, after making these lifestyle changes, you may find yourself living healthier and happier as a result. Read on to find six simple changes to make for a greener lifestyle.

1. Drive Less

If you make a daily commute to work in your own vehicle, consider changing this practice to cut down on your car's harmful emissions. Instead of driving every day, take public transportation or a carpool to to reduce the traffic on the road. Alternate modes of transportation, like walking and biking, have the added benefit of improving your health as well. If you ever ever wanted to learn how to lose water weight, for instance, replacing your drive to work or the store with an energetic walk or jog, either to the destination or a bus stop, would be a good start. 

2. Go Solar

Changing to more sustainable energy sources can make a huge difference. If you cut back on traditional fuel consumption and replace it with a cleaner energy such as solar power, you can reduce your carbon footprint by a large margin. Going solar may be a bit of an investment to begin with, but over time, you will find yourself saving money on power bills. Replacing your energy sources with solar power whenever possible can help in a number of ways in the long run.

3. Cut Down on Plastic and Disposable Packaging

Reduce the amount of plastic you buy whenever possible. Try to avoid buying too many products with flimsy, disposable plastic packaging. To reduce the quantity of packaging you buy, purchase items in bulk when you can. When grocery shopping, instead of getting plastic grocery bags, either replace them with your own reusable bags, or ask for paper bags instead. 

4. Reuse Items

When you cut down on disposable plastic packaging and instead buy sturdier materials, you have the added benefit of being able to reuse those items. For one, if you decide to replace plastic water bottles with one stainless steel water cup, you can clean and reuse that cup for a long time, reducing your plastic purchases.

If you think an item still has use left in it after the first use, find ways to repurpose and reuse it rather than adding more trash to the pile. In addition to cutting down on waste, you would be surprised how much money you end up saving by getting multiple uses out of your purchases. 

5. Conserve Energy

Leaving lights on and devices plugged in when you are not using them is a bad habit that is easy to fall into. When aiming for a greener lifestyle, take notice of all of the appliances and power wasters in your home. If you leave the room, turn the light and ceiling fan off. Unplug chargers when devices are fully charged as well. Turning off devices when not in use will save greatly on energy consumption.

6. Conserve Water

Wasting water is easy to do if you are not aware of it. With a conscious effort though, you can take many measures to cut back on water consumption in your house. Examples include taking shorter showers and turning the sink's tap off while brushing your teeth. These small changes do add up, and not only do they benefit your water bill, they benefit the environment as well.

If you make the switch to a greener lifestyle, those small changes can build to a big difference. Major global changes start with one person, as once you make these adjustments in your life and spread the word to other people, efforts to help the environment can spread around the world.