Prince William has given a rare insight into life behind closed doors at Adelaide Cottage with his wife, the Princess of Wales, and their three children; Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six.
During an interview with the BBC ahead of the Earthshot Prize awards in Cape Town on Wednesday, the Prince of Wales opened up about his family’s personal efforts to limit their impact on the planet.
“Every family tries to do what they can to sort of help with the environment,” Prince William began.
He added that he hoped his children would be watching the Earthshot ceremony from their home in Windsor, where he and Kate have worked hard to ensure their children know the basics of how to be mindful about the planet whilst at home.
“We go through all the basics of recycling and making sure we minimise water use and turning off lights when we leave the house and stuff like that… Which is sensible in what we do around the environment,” continued the future King.
“And I think every family has these conversations. You just try to do what you can,” he added.
© Kensington PalaceThe royal couple settled on Adelaide Cottage to raise their family, stripping back from their 20-room, four-storey apartment at Kensington Palace, saying goodbye to residential help from their beloved live-in nanny, Maria Teresa Borallo, and moving their children to Lambrook School.
The candy-pink cottage located in the Windsor Home Park estate in Berkshire, is just a 10 minute walk from Windsor Castle, where King Charles is also said to impose strict eco-conscious house rules.
© Getty ImagesThe monarch is known to “detest waste” and has a penchant for cooler conditions, which means central heating is limited in his royal residences.
© Tim GrahamHis Majesty’s commitment to being a lifelong environmentalist has no doubt influenced his partiality to teeth-chattering conditions. He has been known to regularly hit net zero emissions at Buckingham Palace, and has recently turned down the temperature on the royal residence’s secret swimming pool in a bid to further reduce energy consumption.
Writing in The Sunday Times last year, Julian Payne, his former communications secretary, recalled: “The King always has the windows wide open. A meeting at Birkhall, his home in the Highlands, in the middle of winter was not for the faint-hearted. I can remember more than one occasion when I thought I might have actually got frostbite while trying to write with a hand I could no longer feel.”
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