Britain's Prince Charles waters his plants with his bathwater.

The 63-year-old prince is a staunch environmentalist and advocate of recycling and always does his best to reuse whatever he can.

He admitted: "I hate throwing things away. I am always trying to find ways of re-using things. There are bits of this, bits of that everywhere.

"I put my bathwater on the garden in the summer - it all helps."

Charles also admitted he stops people throwing items away whenever he can and has transformed his old bathroom curtains to new furnishings for his Highgrove estate.

He admitted in an interview with Kirstie Allsopp for Good Housekeeping magazine: "We've had to take curtains down in my bathroom and I was seeing how we could make cushions out of them.

"[If] you throw things away and they languish somewhere, then you regret the fact that someone is making a vast amount of money out of all the things you've chucked out.

"It is one of the things that has driven me mad all my life. I've often stopped people throwing things away; all those wonderful Victorian lavatories, for example."

Charles also hinted his insistence on turning down the heating in his home and wearing extra layers to keep warm instead is a source of annoyance for wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

He said: "I don't mind keeping the heating down as long as I can have a hot bath.

"Most people think it is too cold. I never hear the end of it."

Charles believes items such as ebooks and Kindles are just passing fads and insists printed books will never die out completely.

He said: "We have Wi-Fi and all sorts of modern things at Highgrove - I'm not saying you've got to go back to medieval days.

"People tend to go berserk over the latest things but before long the novelty wears off. How sad if you were to chuck away all the books, only to find that eventually it comes round again, because I'm sure people will rediscover the joy of a real book."

And though Charles' sons, Princes William and Harry, mock their father for his thrifty ways and environmental passion, he is hopeful some of his beliefs will be passed on through them.

He said: "They say 'Oh, he's on again', you know. But you never quite know with your children, do you? Because although they may pull your leg all the time, sometimes you find out later they have talked to other people about it."

The full interview appears in the June issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale on May 3.