Getting on board with eco-friendly habits is a rewarding transformation. It also takes some learning. You don't just decide one day you're going to give up plastic and cage-raised chickens and it happens. You have to gather knowledge and become an extremely informed consumer. A good area to start is in your shopping habits. Once you've got your shopping habits mastered, the rest comes easy, because you aren't allowing unsustainable items into your home.

Take Your Own Bags

The first thing everyone who wants to live a sustainable lifestyle does is take their own bags to the grocery store with them. That's because you don't want to use their plastic bags. What's going to become of those plastic bags if they make it into your home? You know you can't throw them away.

Choose different bags for various types of items. For boxes, such as cereal, you'll want a large bag with a large mouth. For small items that can get away, have a drawstring bag so they don't escape to your floorboard. You'll soon become a well-oiled machine when it comes to grabbing your shopping gear for a trip to the store.

Be Picky

A large part of sustainability is about producing less. Marketers will try to convince you that you need everything, but you don't. The more production there is, the more pollution there is. The more minimalist the society becomes, the less production there is, and the better the health of the environment and the earth.

It may seem like a radical concept, but global warming isn't going to stop until there's radical change. Stop being consumer-minded and start being earth-minded.

Buy Local 

If you have a farmer's market, support it. When you buy produce at the grocery store, it's coming from places like Mexico or the warmer regions of the United States. That means those products have to be shipped to your location, and shipping requires fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels aren't just bad on the environment, they're also bad on your health. The release of fossil fuels into the air you breath contaminates it. If you have asthma, it can make it worse. It can also create health issues, such as respiratory disorders and cancer.

Support Companies That Don't Use Plastic

Many items can be purchased in containers other than plastic. Plastic has become a huge issue for the environment and the world could really use a lot less of it.

Milk comes in a giant plastic gallon jug, but it also comes in half-gallon paper cartons. If you drink cola, you can purchase it in a 2-liter plastic bottle, or you can purchase it in cans.

If more consumers made buying choices that showed plastic products were less likely to sell, manufacturers would finally get on board with sustainable packaging. It's going to take the consumers to change current practices or it'll never happen.

Buy Used

There are some products it doesn't hurt to buy used, including cars, bicycles, clothes, appliances, tools, and cookware, just to name a few. Buying used items means these items won't end up in a landfill and become waste. Buying used items also means greenhouse gases won't be emitted into the atmosphere for their production.

It might seem nice to have shiny, new objects, but that type of mindset is you putting yourself before the planet. That's exactly the type of thinking you've got to change.

The reason the majority of people haven't made the effort to adopt sustainable living habits is because it's not easy. Humans have become a population that prefers the easy route, but the easy route has proven to be detrimental to everyone's health and the planet. Choose the difficult option and start living it.