Steve Gild, an environmental health and safety officer at Vanderbilt, and his wife and three sons were the first to take Mayor Karl Dean’s Green Pledge prior to the Sounds baseball game on Saturday, June 13. The mayor kicked off his environmental pledge campaign at the Sounds second annual “Go Green Night.”

Mayor Karl Dean is asking Nashville residents to take a five-step pledge to help the environment by saving electricity and water and cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions.

"Our citizens have a tremendous desire to help make Nashville more environmentally sustainable and to help address the bigger issue of global climate change," Dean said.

"While it may seem simple, the most important thing individuals can do is make easy changes in their everyday life to reduce waste, reduce energy use and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that go into our air. Collectively, these efforts will have a huge impact."

Gild said he and his family already do most of the things required by the pledge, but they want to focus even more on environmentally sustainability and be an example to friends and neighbors.

Dean has said he wants Nashville to be the "greenest city in the Southeast." Creating the pledge was one of 71 recommendations the mayor's Green Ribbon Committee on Environmental Sustainability made in April.

The Green Pledge includes five simple things:

ENERGY
I PLEDGE to replace 4 light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs.
I CAN eliminate 1 ton of carbon dioxide emissions over the life of the CFLs.
TOGETHER all Nashvillians can save enough kilowatt-hours to power 5,260 households.

WATER
I PLEDGE to turn off the water when brushing my teeth.
I CAN save 3.8 gallons of water a day.
TOGETHER all Nashvillians can conserve enough water in a year to fill L.P. Field four times.

AIR
I PLEDGE to replace at least one car trip a week with walking, bicycling, carpooling or public transit.
I CAN decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 1,000 pounds.
TOGETHER all Nashvillians can eliminate more than 290,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to removing 5,800 cars from the road every year.

LAND
I PLEDGE to plant and care for at least one tree this year.
I CAN save at least 13 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.
TOGETHER all Nashvillians can eliminate as much carbon dioxide as the trees on 4,652 acres of undeveloped land every year.

WASTE
I PLEDGE to reduce my use of plastic shopping bags, by substituting reusable bags instead.
I CAN save up to 208 plastic bags a year from being made.
TOGETHER all Nashvillians can eliminate 120,400,000 plastic bags and 2,257,000 pounds of waste every year.

For more information, go to www.nashville.gov/green/ or www.nespower.com.