Put an end to annoying packaging

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a frenetic piece of piano music that was entitled Rage Over a Lost Penny and the composition reflected his impotence at not being able to find the coin.

While not so elegantly executed, I have a similar frustration with trying to extract common objects from fiendish and devious packets that enclose many of today’s products. And many of these packets contain electric items from batteries to memory sticks.

But let’s get this thing into perspective. While foodstuffs may be game for elaborate packing because of health reasons and in a bid to extend shelf life, why do we have to have the same degree of security when it comes to batteries, a bar of soap, a ball pen refill or a computer memory stick?

Take foods for instance. Biscuits are a major contributor to broken fingernails and rising gall as we fight the plastic packet only to open it upside down and shoot the contents over the floor. I can understand the hygiene and non-contamination reasons behind the protection. But I can’t help recalling with affection the days when biscuits were displayed in the shop and served from an open tin into a brown paper bag.

And while we are in the grocers, where the grocer wore a full-length long black apron and no plastic gloves, bacon was sliced in front of the customer, who chose the thickness of the rashers as the grocer held up a sample for inspection while the flies buzzed around to be chased away by the delivery boy. Sugar, butter, lard and eggs were not pre-wrapped in finger-defying shrink plastic. And I doubt we were any less healthy through all this exposure to air and other people.

In fact, I believe our immune systems were better served by this exposure to all manner of bugs. I am sure this cotton wooling has contributed in no small part to making us such precious, sensitive little animals that today we cannot take a minute chance of a little foreign matter in our food. It has to be a contributing factor to the fact that antibiotics are no longer as effective as they once were - so sanitised have we become.

However, with world travel and the danger of carrying strange and exotic diseases globally, food wrapping has become more or less essential.  But we should not lose site of the fact that most plastics come from oil, a commodity that is a finite resource.

One of the greatest frustrations, and one of the most challenging, are medical pills that mostly defy all but the smallest and most dexterous fingers - not the often arthritis-ridden fingers of the elderly who are most likely to need them. Sick people, some with failing eyesight, have to struggle with double-wrapped pills inside metallised sheets. Whatever happened to pill boxes?

How many times have I just avoided major surgery by stabbing at a vacuum-wrapped memory stick with a non-too-clean screwdriver and how many times have I struggled with a bar of soap having cardboard on the outside and then cellophane wrapped inside that? What is so precious about soap?

Apart from my screwdriver-attacking frenzies, I’ve tried attacking the packet with a pair of scissors. I’ve tried sheer brute strength, twisting and bending in the hope of finding a weak spot but I inevitably retire beaten and broken and wait for the blood pressure to subside before having another go. Why should it be this hard to get into the packet or am I missing some delightfully simple way of entry. If so, there are many more like me out there who have not a clue how to break down the barriers.

So can we perhaps be a little more selective in our packaging - eliminate  the unnecessary from the necessary. Packet in, I say, for the sake of good relations.