good, green, outside the box

Here's a neat new idea I just read about in an Urbanite Baltimore article about outside-the-box ideas taking root here in Baltimore.  They've coined the term "crowdsourcing" for citizens at large committing random feelgood acts via iPhone.  Yep, there's an app for that now too.  

Using the system at www.citysourced.com you can report a sewage leak or pile of illegally dumped garbage by sending a photo that will be automatically geotagged by the system.  You can record audio clips of feedback for government officials, add to local maps, etc etc, all in the interest of fighting blight and making your city a better place to live.

Check out screenshots here.  

Also in this Urbanite article they reference the Passive House movement of super-insulated, energy-efficient houses like the one designed by the University of Illinois team in the most recent Solar Decathlon.  I blogged about this event back in October 2009. 

More good green ideas:

Produce for the People: a group of artist/activists called Fallen Fruit mapped out public fruit tree locations for the picking in Los Angeles. http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/3/viegeneretal.htm

City composting may be coming, thanks to organizations like Keith Losoya's Waste Neutral Group.  The company already hauls food scraps from institutions and businesses, composts them in nearby Carroll County, and returns them to the city as compost.  Next stop:  curbside composting?