Transitioning to New Habits
When you change your routine, adopt a new habit, or transition into a new way of doing things, you can use a verbal periphrasis with the verb passar. To say that you have "started to" do something regularly, combine passar a with an infinitive verb.
| to start to (do) / to turn into (change into) | passar a |
To form this, conjugate passar to match the subject, add the preposition a, and leave the main action verb in its infinitive form. Since you are often talking about a change that has already taken effect, you will frequently see passar conjugated in the past tense (pretérito perfeito).
| After reading the book, I started to adopt minimalism. | Depois de ler o livro, passei a adotar o minimalismo. |
| He started to adopt conscious consumption. | Ele passou a adotar um consumo consciente. |
Adopting Conscious Consumption
This structure is particularly useful when talking about lifestyle changes, such as shifting toward minimalism or adopting conscious consumption.
| We started to have a quite conscious consumption. | Nós passámos a ter um consumo bastante consciente. |
| The girl started to reuse the plastic packages. | A rapariga passou a reutilizar as embalagens de plástico. |
Notice that when you list multiple new habits that you have recently started, you will generally repeat the preposition a before each new infinitive verb.
| To reduce waste, they started recycling and reusing everything. | Para reduzir o desperdício, eles passaram a reciclar e a reutilizar tudo. |
| You started being more conscious and accumulating fewer things. | Tu passaste a ser mais consciente e a acumular menos coisas. |