Margarine tubs and yoghurt pots etc 

Why is there no legislation to force manufacturers to use only recyclable materials in their packaging?

Scotland 

Recycling is more efficient the shorter the distance it is taken. London has more than six times the population of both Glasgow and Edinburgh combined and a higher population than ALL of Scotland. This means that there are larger amounts of potential waste to recycle from London compared to Scotland meaning if the recycling plant was located there, larger amounts of rubbish would have to travel shorter distances making it more efficient. Perhaps Manchester/Liverpool area would have been a better compromise for Tetrapak being between Scotland and London but close to urban areas.

What about Scotland?! If you sited the plant nearer London it would still be a very long way from a very large number of places where cartons could be generated, i.e. the rest of the country! Sometimes people need to remember that London may be the capital, but it is not the centre of the universe and is just as far away from Scotland as Scotland is from London. Either way, one end of the country would be penalised and, bearing in mind how limited and expensive land is around London, is it any wonder they went for Scotland? 

Why in Scotland!? 

OK, it's fine if you live nearby the recycling plant for the Tetrapak cartons, but to use massive amounts of petrol to take cartons from miles away in England or Wales would be pointless. Local councils would be doing more harm than good - so tetrapak are fooling people into thinking that they care about the environment when recycling their complex cartons would cause more pollution if people in the rest of the UK sent them there. They should have sited their plant nearer the higher populations - London and the SE for example.

Tetrapak 

Technically Tetrapak are not hypocrits - they state that their cartons CAN be recycled, which is true. It is also true for many other materials that currently are not collected for recycling. Saying that your product can be recycled is in most cases correct - the problem is that there are no or very few facilities in the UK that carry out this recycling and few companies prepared to export.

Tetrapak are hypocrits 

They claim to care about the environment by saying their cartons can be recycled but they mislead because the only facilities for recycling their complex cartons made of so many materials is in Scotland. Why can't we just have our milk back in glass bottles?

I think you would find that it would be very difficult to create legislation that would be applicable across all of the countries that produce and export their product to the UK in plastic containers! Many of these manufacturers are moving towards more recyclable formats anyway, although it does take time. Part of this is due to pressure from consumers coupled with the co's having to be more open about their activities as a result of CSR reporting. It is happening, recyclability will come, but at the moment there are too many variants, blends and polystyrene containers to make collections economically viable at the current time. It is very easy to slam the big conglomerates, but we have to remember that things do take time to happen. Legislation, while it has its place, can do more harm than good when passed due to mis-informed public outcry rather than sound reasoning.