Existing approaches to recycled cinema chiefly attribute the genre's contributions to its use and juxtaposition of extraneous images. This essay argues for a broader significance of recycled cinema within the history of postwar experimental film by considering more literally the priorities of materials and process involved in the practice of recycling. It examines the found-footage films (1957-58) and Computer-Laser-Videos (1984-present) of the artist Raphael Ortiz as a case study through which to consider the full-fledged ‘material ecology’ of recycled cinema. The selective act of recycling not only draws attention to the physical objects out of which found-footage films are made. Recycling also implicates such films within the social history of environmentalist movements and permits an exploration of how they might embody a form of ecological value. When extended in these ways, recycled cinema amounts to much more than simply a synonym for found footage.