Shocking footage shows how a stretch of river has been left looking 'like a Third World country' after it became 'festooned' with rubbish in the aftermath of flooding.
Huge parts of the River Soar is now strewn with household and industrial waste following widespread flooding caused by Storm Henk in Leicester.
Hundreds of thousands of items of litter can be seen washed up along the riverbank and stuck in trees along a stretch spanning more than a mile.
One university academic, who researches plastic pollution in the environment,
revealed she had never seen anything like it in the UK before.
Professor Sarah Gabbott, of the University of Leicester, said the scenes even reminded her of parts of Africa she had visited as part of her research.
She has now warned people who have been fly-tipping and dropping litter in the area that their actions are having a 'devastating' impact and killing wildlife.
She said: "I have never seen anything like this in the UK before.
"These scenes would not be out of place in some of the developing countries I have visited as part of my research such as Africa.
"I have been to Nairobi, in Kenya, and Malawi and witnesses similar sights to this and we have much better waste management systems in place.
"It's unbelievable really. I could not believe my eyes when we stumbled across it.
"The river is just festooned in plastic bags and material of all different colours and types.
"It looks almost like there's a landfill, which has just been shoved into the River Soar.
"It's a scary snapshot of what lies underneath the river, which we don't usually get to see."
Prof Gabbot said the filth was left behind when the floods brought rubbish which was already in the river to the surface.
She said as well as aluminium cans and plastic bottles, she had also spotted kitchen units, fire extinguishers, car bumpers, tricycles, barbecues, mattresses and sofas in the wake of Storm Henk.
She believes much of the issue derives from people fly-tipping waste in a brook further upstream as well as discarding litter with little care for the environment.
Prof Gabbott, who also volunteers with the Green Circle Nature Regeneration CIC, added litter dropped on streets also ends up washed into the river due to rain.
She said: "We had these incredible floods and the water has risen, broken over the banks and all the rubbish in the river has been washed across the flood plain.
"Now it is stranded so we can see it. It is like our dirty litter has been hung out to dry where we can all witness it
"There's a nearby brook which has a bad fly-tipping problem - we see huge amounts of industrial and household waste dumped there.
"I've seen massive offcuts of textiles and labels discarded - fire extinguishers, kitchen units, tricycles, barbecues, TV's, mattresses, sofas, everything really.
Huge parts of the River Soar is now strewn with household and industrial waste following widespread flooding caused by Storm Henk in Leicester.
Hundreds of thousands of items of litter can be seen washed up along the riverbank and stuck in trees along a stretch spanning more than a mile.
One university academic, who researches plastic pollution in the environment,
revealed she had never seen anything like it in the UK before.
Professor Sarah Gabbott, of the University of Leicester, said the scenes even reminded her of parts of Africa she had visited as part of her research.
She has now warned people who have been fly-tipping and dropping litter in the area that their actions are having a 'devastating' impact and killing wildlife.
She said: "I have never seen anything like this in the UK before.
"These scenes would not be out of place in some of the developing countries I have visited as part of my research such as Africa.
"I have been to Nairobi, in Kenya, and Malawi and witnesses similar sights to this and we have much better waste management systems in place.
"It's unbelievable really. I could not believe my eyes when we stumbled across it.
"The river is just festooned in plastic bags and material of all different colours and types.
"It looks almost like there's a landfill, which has just been shoved into the River Soar.
"It's a scary snapshot of what lies underneath the river, which we don't usually get to see."
Prof Gabbot said the filth was left behind when the floods brought rubbish which was already in the river to the surface.
She said as well as aluminium cans and plastic bottles, she had also spotted kitchen units, fire extinguishers, car bumpers, tricycles, barbecues, mattresses and sofas in the wake of Storm Henk.
She believes much of the issue derives from people fly-tipping waste in a brook further upstream as well as discarding litter with little care for the environment.
Prof Gabbott, who also volunteers with the Green Circle Nature Regeneration CIC, added litter dropped on streets also ends up washed into the river due to rain.
She said: "We had these incredible floods and the water has risen, broken over the banks and all the rubbish in the river has been washed across the flood plain.
"Now it is stranded so we can see it. It is like our dirty litter has been hung out to dry where we can all witness it
"There's a nearby brook which has a bad fly-tipping problem - we see huge amounts of industrial and household waste dumped there.
"I've seen massive offcuts of textiles and labels discarded - fire extinguishers, kitchen units, tricycles, barbecues, TV's, mattresses, sofas, everything really.
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FunTranscript
00:00 [Footsteps]
00:02 It's just unreal, you get to the city of Leicester
00:10 and from the city of Leicester for at least a couple of kilometres
00:14 literally every tree, every bush, the river banks are just festooned with rubbish.
00:21 I have honestly never seen anything like it before.
00:24 This is all good here though, isn't it?
00:30 So what do you want?
00:32 We find a lot of different stuff, everything from the everyday litter,
00:43 you know, your plastic bags, aluminium cans, plastic bottles, things like that,
00:47 all the way through to quite exotic things.
00:49 We've got car bumpers, plastic chairs, kitchen cabinets, kitchen utensils.
00:55 We have tricycles, loads of children's toys, basically you name it, it's there.
01:01 Barbecues as well, coat hangers, TVs, computer screens, it's all there.
01:10 Obviously it's a real eyesore, nobody wants to walk along the river
01:21 and see this rubbish sort of in your face.
01:24 But the second thing is, none of this stuff is going anywhere very quickly.
01:28 Plastic bottles take 450 years at least to break down.
01:33 So this material is going to hang around a long time and eventually
01:36 it's going to break down into smaller and smaller and smaller particles,
01:40 make it to the ocean and become microplastics,
01:43 or it's going to just basically stay around in the environment
01:47 where it's a hazard to wildlife because they get trapped in it
01:50 and it's also just toxic.
01:54 [sound of wind]
02:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]