Aaagh, I've had to deal with so much crap packaging in the last few weeks that I could scream. Yesterday, we bought some nice slate place mats from House of Fraser, only to bring them back and have real difficulty getting the sticky "sale" labels off the things. This photo shows how far we got (we were doing one place mat each, complete with warm water etc) for about 15 minutes. Another 15 minutes later we'd got down to just the sticky residue left behind by the glue. Do the shops not realise that they are completely spoiling the products by doing this?

Right... deep breath, rant over. But seriously, I've had to deal with irremovable glue from a new trowel from Homebase, a chrome mixing bowl from Ikea which has been permanently marked by the residue left from the stickers which has tarnished its surface, and insane amounts of plastic in two layers packaging one of their battery chargers. I can calculate that I've spend around two to three hours attempting to remove packaging from things I've bought in the last month - and that's being conservative.

I've had in my mind for a while that there should be some kind of campaign to reduce the amount of packaging on every day purchases, and to make it easily removable. In essence, the idea that's been brewing in my head is C.R.A.P. The Campaign for the Reduction of Annoying Packaging. Daft idea? Let me know in the comments...

There are actually a few campaigns of the type being run in the UK. A quick web search shows up the Women's Institute campaign, the regional development agency in Yorkshire and the Humber, Yorkshire Forward has a campaign and the Independent newspaper has apparently also been campaigning on the subject.

So, I have one question... why is it acceptable for manufacturer and stores to attach ridiculous amounts of glue and layer upon layer of plastic to our purchases? I certainly don't want to buy the packaging, but I am being forced to.

So, the idea behind C.R.A.P. so far is that there is a fairly straightforward interactive website, where people can post in stories and pictures (like the one here) of packaging nightmares and unacceptable practises. The manufacturer or store would be named (there's nothing but the truth going here, so I don't think there's any legal issue) and perhaps there would be some kind of rating system for companies which do well and hence should be rewarded with our business.

Issues to be considered could be:

1. Amount of packaging. Is the packaging excessive?

2. Recycled / recyclable. Is the packaging easily recyclable?

3. Ease of removal. Can labels be easily peeled off leaving no trace? Can packaging be removed without having to be incredibly strong?

These are all just initial thoughts at the moment, but they've been in my head for a while now. I'd be interested to hear what other people think of the idea. Would it work? Are there any obvious things I've missed?