Recycling: My big fat hairy arse.
This is for profit making and nothing else. The fact they get some "good" PR out of it is merely a side attraction.
They get the phones for free, the resulting material minus the extraction process costs, equals profit.
Also, beware of recycled plastics. There's a reason they're not widely used, the quality of recycled plastic is by far less, and less strong than the native first-use raw material. So you're limited in where you can use it.
Saving the earth my arse. Unless of course you count the money you made in the process...