Actor Jeremy Irons dumps packaging from his food in front of stunned supermarket workers as a protest against unnecessary waste.

The Oscar-winning star, a keen environmentalist, insists on unwrapping all his groceries while still at the checkout and leaving a mountain of packaging behind.

He is adamant environmentally-harmful global waste levels would be dramatically reduced if other shoppers followed his lead.

Irons tells British Tv show This Morning, "What I do, and I'm advising others to do, is to take off the wrapping at the point of purchase and leave it with them and say, 'I don't want that, I want what's inside.' Leave it there.

"If enough people do that they will say to their suppliers, 'Look we've got to find a way of packaging this so we don't have all this, we can't deal with it.'"

Irons is a leading anti-waste campaigner and headed to the Lebanese city of Sidon for his documentary Trashed, which focuses on the mountains of rubbish blighting the area. Earlier this year (12), he lobbied European Commission bureaucrats about reducing waste and increasing recycling rates.