Marty Hope, Calgary Herald

Published: Thursday, August 29, 2013

Learning is always easier in a fun environment, so say education specialists-and so says Joey Hundert.

Case in point, the 32-yearold Edmonton entrepreneur is heading up a convoy of big-and we do mean big-educational toys down the Queen Elizabeth II Highway to Calgary where he will set up a midway for four days in September on the Stampede grounds as part of the debuting Beakerhead celebrations.

Hundert calls his rolling classroom-cum-midway Sustainival – a carnival built around various aspects of sustainability. For instance, all the rides, including the gravity-challenging Gravitron, are all run by renewable energy like used vegetable oil.

“The core idea of Sustainival is that people learn best when they are having fun, and a midway is a fun place,” says Hundert. And the lesson he teaches has a definite green tinge to it – the importance of renewable energy sources, clean technologies and ecology and energy in the future.

Sustainability is Hundert’s life.

As well as being the ringmaster for the world’s first green midway and carnival, he also operates Sustainitech, a company that helps municipal governments adapt to sustainable technologies available for power, water, waste and transit.

But for now, Beakerhead and Sustainival are all about fun.

“It’s the perfect venue for us; it’s an incredible vision, and I’m happy to be invited to the party,” says Hundert.

The whole idea of Sustainival “popped” into Hundert’s head back in 2006, but it wasn’t until 2009 when interest in sustainability had grown dramatically that he decided his original idea – including the Gravitron – was “just too cool not to happen.”

Sustainival runs Sept. 12-15. See Beakerhead.org for operating hours and ticket information.

© Calgary Herald 2013

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