It's not easy being green. In our eco-conscious environment, Kermit the Frog's lament rings as true for a major corporation trying to reduce its carbon footprint as it does for an ad landscape full of green messages fighting for a viewer's attention.

So, when an ad touts that it's "made from recycled film clips" it turns heads, but it raises the question: isn't "recycled clips" a fanciful way of denoting stock footage?

"In terms of footage it isn't something that is, strictly speaking, 'recycled'," admits Euro RSCG, London copywriter Dominic Gettins about the ad in question, "It Isn't Easy Being Green" for EDF Energy. "It's a kind of conceit. But it's to show the idea of putting into practice what you preach and having a bit of fun as well."

The :60 spot is a patchwork of clips set to a rendition of Kermit's plaintive "Bein' Green", while a voice-over outlines EDF's initiatives to reduce its carbon output. Gettins says that EDF's commitment to environmental action set the tone for the agency to respond in kind, making the use of "recycled" clips essential.

"Our thought was: if they're going to start with more action than words, then we as an agency have to as well," he says. "We thought that normally with these big energy company budgets, you imagine yourself flying around the world and leaving a huge carbon footprint just trying to shoot your ad. But, if we were going to continue their logic through, we would have to say, why should we do that? Why can't we cut up old footage and just make the film down the road in London?" The year-long process began with the agency editing together clips from libraries but the initial outcome was uninspiring.

"It lacked some of those nice moments where you could identify with something from your childhood or a famous piece of footage," explains Gettins. "We wanted to make sure that it wasn't all just from libraries, but digging deeper than that."

The result is a mix of clips, including JFK footage, UK children's shows such as Thunderbirds and Danger Mouse, an Incredible Hulk comic strip and, adding further credence to the agency's use of the term "recycled," found footage like art director Jamie Colonna's childhood home videos.

When clips couldn't clear (Disney said no to the use of Kermit), the team made it a rule to replace it with something better.

"There's some great COI [Central Office of Information] footage that we found," says Gettins. "An old piece of black-and-white footage of a man surrounded by signs saying, 'Watch your Meters.' It's an old government film from the period after [WWII], where they were trying to tell people to save energy, save money and save everything."

Euro RSCG http://www.eurorscg.com