In her role as president of People First Dunedin, a national self-advocacy organisation for intellectually disabled people, she travels all over the city on her scooter.
She said she frequently came across glass on streets and footpaths and it was often impossible to avoid it.
It cost her $75 recently to replace one tyre after it was punctured by broken glass.
She took the bill to the Dunedin City Council, arguing it should pay it and also clean the city streets and footpaths more regularly.
However, the council believed a change in attitudes towards smashing glass and discarding rubbish would help curb the issue.
Roading maintenance engineer Peter Standring said while he was sympathetic to Miss McPherson's concerns, the council could not take responsibility for the damage.
"There are many, many obstacles around. We can't hold people's hand," he said.
The "pretty sufficient" street cleaning regime of sweeping the central city daily, other shopping areas twice a week and suburban areas every six weeks collected a "significant" and "disappointing" amount of rubbish.
But rubbish and glass would always be around unless there was a change in culture, Mr Standring said.
If people were concerned about rubbish or glass in an area, they could contact the council directly and contractors would tidy it up.
Miss McPherson agreed people needed to think about their actions when it came to breaking glass and littering and would take Mr Standring's advice to write a letter of complaint to the mayor.
Age Concern Otago and CCS Disability Action had not been made aware of any concerns mobility scooter users had about glass on Dunedin streets.
