The paper concerns the identification of projective closed ideals of C*-algebras. We prove that, if a C*-algebra has the property that every closed left ideal is projective, then the same is true for all its commutative C*-subalgebras. Further, we say a Banach algebra A is hereditarily projective if every closed left ideal of A is projective. As a corollary of the stated result we show that no infinite-dimensional AW*-algebra is hereditarily projective. We also prove that, for a commutative C*-algebra A contained in [Bscr ](H), where H is a separable Hilbert space, the following conditions are equivalent: (i) A is separable; and (ii) the C*-tensor product A [otimes ]minA is hereditarily projective. Howerever, there is a non-separable, hereditarily projective, commutative C*-algebra A contained in [Bscr ](H), where H is a separable Hilbert space.