You turn off the lights when you leave a room? Great. Your kids have been raised to reduce, reuse and recycle? Even better. But what about your home? Do you know what you can do to create a healthier, more environmentally friendly home for you and your family? Read on to find out what's really going on under your roof and what you can do about it.

You know your shoe size. What about the size of your carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint is a tool that helps us look at our impact on the earth — the resources we consume and the resulting waste and how that contributes to global warming. Your carbon footprint is a calculation of the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by your daily activities — think of it as the tailpipe of everything in your life. How you travel and what you buy have their own environmental impact. Carbon footprints help us see how we impact the environment and show us where we can make changes for our benefit and for the earth.

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Global warming and your home
Homes contribute to global warming in a big way. Buildings consume 30 percent of energy and 60 percent of electricity used in the U.S. It's much easier to make the connection between driving your car and global warming — you can literally see fumes coming out of the tailpipe. Gross! But all the electricity it takes to power your refrigerator, lights, hairdryer, AC and everything else with a plug in your home, in most cases, comes from burning coal or another fossil fuel to generate electricity.

What's going on under your roof
You pay good money for those energy bills every month — why use more than you need? In the average U.S. home, a third of energy is used for lighting and another third for heating and cooling, while easy, cost-effective household improvements (like sealing air leaks and buying energy-efficient products) could save you a third of your energy bill, according to the U.S. government's Partnerships for Home Energy Efficiency.

Did you know indoor air can be 3-10 times more polluted than outside air because of the gases released from common materials (like paint and carpet) and poor ventilation? Buying natural products, avoiding synthetic carpets and using low-VOC paints can benefit the environment and your family's health. A healthy environment means a healthy home.

Building new homes
Today's green building measures can be followed during any major renovation or construction to decrease impact on the environment and build a healthy, comfortable home.

Construction and major renovations cause obvious environmental disruption, but less obvious is the development and infrastructure required to make new homes. Paved surfaces, driveways and roads have to be created for new homes, so more materials have to be extracted, transported and eventually disposed of.