Martin Hutchinson – who has travelled thousands of miles across the globe highlighting what people are doing to the environment – attended Lockerbie Community Council’s meeting on Tuesday night where he slammed the B7076 road.
Martin discovered a number of bottles filled with urine, bundles of litter and other waste whilst on his travels.
The explorer has encouraged townsfolk to come together in a bid to solve the waste problem that blights the stretch.
Martin said: “The amount of rubbish along the B7076 is beyond belief. Sixteen miles non-stop. It is the worst I’ve seen in Scotland.
“There are bottles of pee, poo and everything else. This has got to stop.
“You can’t keep on saying you’ll clean it and then five years on you end up with nothing happening.
“It’s a battle but you live here. It’s your home town.
“The bins need emptied as well, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know who’s responsible for them.
“Every lay-by is overflowing with rubbish and that’s where I would say a good percentage of the rubbish is coming from.”
Community councillors agreed with Martin’s concerns saying they had also noticed an increase in litter on the road.
Ian McLatchie said: “One thing that gets me is the motorway slip roads. They are horrendous.
“There were also bins here (in the town) which weren’t getting emptied on the street because they didn’t have a bin collector.”
Lucie Dudgeon added: “I echo Martin’s sentiments. I have noticed an increase in litter in the last two or three years. It’s just consistently getting worse. I travel that road quite a lot.
“If there was something we could do pro-actively it would be great to support that because we are where people are travelling through to go up Scotland and we don’t want that to be the impression they get of us.”
