Old shower tiles

I decided I needed to update my bathroom, if I wanted to even have a chance of selling my home. I have a shower/bath combo (standard in most homes), but I needed to update it. After talking to my handyman friend, we decided to rip out the bathtub and put a walk-in shower.

Two green decisions: What to do with the old bathtub and tiles? What to buy for the new tiles?

For the bathtub, I had no idea where to turn to get it "recycled" or reused somehow. I wish I knew who to ask, because I ended up setting it on the curb to be hauled away. I wanted to bury it in the yard and make a fish pond out of it, but I knew I would never have the time to complete that task. Strike one!

The tiles that were removed were saved into a box (my request). I spend a couple hours cleaning and sorting through the mess of drywall and paper backing to figure out how many tiles I had remaining. I wanted to give them away to someone, but we didn't have a ReStore type of place nearby that I could drop them off.
(Update: Later I realized we did in fact have a ReStore, I just never knew about it!)

I decided to go on craigslist and see if anyone was interested. Luckily, I had a taker, and I was able to give her some free tiles to redo her bathroom, and I was able to ease my conscience about the bathtub. Going green is definitely a process, something that takes diligence and patience. It would have been easy to just throw the tiles away and avoided a few hours of labor, but I'm glad I did it.

Finally, I had to find new tiles. I didn't have a lot of time to find what I wanted, and didn't have the money to get exactly what I wanted. The prices I was getting for tiles made out of recycled material ranged from $5-12 per square foot. This was quite the increase over the $1.50/sq ft price that I could get from Lowes. (Again, if I had known about the ReStore, I could have saved some serious money, and avoided another green mistake). I unfortunately chose the new tiles from Lowes.

Overall, one positive (the tiles) and two negatives (bathtub and new tiles). Not feeling real good about it. Lost this battle, but determined to win the war...