Chris Jackson/Getty Images
- Prince Charles told the BBC his Aston Martin car runs on fuel partly sourced from wine and cheese.
- In the same interview, he said his views on protecting the environment were once widely ridiculed.
- The future king also shared his deep worry for the world he will leave behind to his grandchildren.
Prince Charles' vintage Aston Martin sports car is partly powered by cheese waste and surplus wine, he told BBC Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt in an interview that aired on Monday.
In the interview, filmed in a garden he said he planted at Balmoral to honor the birth of Prince George, the future king shared the practical ways he's incorporating his passion for the environment into everyday life. One of those ways, he said, was converting the fuel source for the vintage car given to him by the Queen on his 21st birthday.
"My old Aston Martin, that runs now on waste products," the Prince of Wales said. "It runs on, can you believe this, surplus English white wine and whey from the cheese process."
Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
In 2020, Prince Charles told The Telegraph he insisted Aston Martin engineers find him an alternate fuel source, a demand he said was initially met with some pushback.
"The engineers at Aston said, 'Oh, it'll ruin the whole thing,'" he said, according to the publication.
"I said, 'Well I won't drive it then,' so they got on with it and now they admit that it runs better and is more powerful on that fuel than it is on petrol," he added. His Aston Martin is also not the only royal mode of transport he's managed to convert, sharing in the same interview that he'd battled to have the royal train changed to run on used cooking oil.
Charles, who BBC editor Rowlatt said first mentioned environmental issues in 1970, said in their latest interview that he finds it interesting that after being "rather ridiculed for so long" that he's now being asked to speak about climate change.
Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
"I was accused of being anti-science," Charles said. "It wasn't much fun, as you can imagine."
Calling himself a realist who thinks it's taken the world "far too long" to make climate change concerns mainstream, Charles told Rowlatt it's time for world leaders to stop talking and "get action on the ground," something he's been trying to make happen for the past 40 years.
Charles added that it's the world he will leave behind for his grandchildren that has him "deeply worried."
"Why do you think I've done this for all these years? Because I've minded about, and always have done, the next generations. I've been doing this really to make sure my children, your grandchildren and everybody else's have some future," he said.
Representatives for Clarence House and Aston Martin did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.