“What have you got there?” I asked my sister as she dragged a heavy bag out of her car.

“Wood shavings, or sawdust or something. It’s for George,” she puffed, pulling the bag up the two steps to the house. I ran to help her, worried that the bag would split and leave a trail of sawdust on her carpet, while the dog bounded around us, wagging his tail in my face.

“Whatever does George want that for?” I asked, wondering what new project her husband had taken up.

“It’s for the new toilet, actually,” my sister said, pointing towards the extension on the side of the house. “He’s gone all ecological and installed a composting toilet. It’s going to save the environment and save us lots of money at the same time.”

“So you’re the one who has to haul the bags of sawdust around?”

My sister just shrugged, and looked a bit embarrassed, so I moved the furniture out of the way as she pulled the bag along the floor with the dog following closely, sniffing hard at the bag.

“The sawdust is only temporary,” my sister said, wiping her hands as she came back to get the rest of her purchases from the car. “George says he is going to make his own wood shavings once everything is finished.”

“Oh, yes?”

I looked outside to the shed, which contained partially completed furniture and enough car parts to build at least three vehicles, except that none of the parts matched. Behind the shed stood a boat covered in a tarpaulin, and, beyond that, several pieces of rusting machinery. George was never short of a project.

“So how does it work then?” I asked.

“Well, you just pour the wood shavings into the toilet in place of water and it all composts itself.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, and went home to my old fashioned plumbing, grateful that my husband was not in the least bit practical.

The next time I visited my sister I made a point of checking out the new bathroom, which smelled of fresh wood from the large bin of wood shavings next to the composting toilet. The dog followed me around, looking unusually subdued. When I asked what was wrong with him my sister pointed outside to where George was standing in front of a workbench next to a large pile of logs. George picked up a log and clamped it into the workbench, then, taking his power saw, he whittled away at the end of the log, showering wood bits onto a mound under the table.

“Wow, that’s quite a process, just for a toilet,” I said.

“It’s awful. The logs were delivered in a big truck that hit the neighbour’s gate when it reversed and now George is out there for hours making that terrible noise, and the bits of wood blow all over the place and have already blocked one drain, and the poor dog is stuck indoors, to keep him safe.”

“Why don’t you just buy more of those bags of sawdust?” I asked, “isn’t that what the manufacturers recommend?”

“George says they’re a rip off and the company is profiting at the expense of the environment,” my sister said.

As we watched the power saw slice through another log, a sliver of wood flew from the saw and broke the window of the shed, sending shards of glass all over the grass. George stopped the saw and looked at the glass, shaking his head. The dog, no doubt taking the silence as a sign that he could now go out, began to bark and scratch at the door.

“Oh dear; George will have to clean up that glass before we let the dog out.”

“Perhaps you could train the dog to use your new toilet,” I said. “Now that really would save the environment.”