Members of the Michigan National Guard load bottled water at a fire station, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016 in Flint, Mich.

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

With President Obama declaring the Flint water crisis a , numerous Good Samaritans —including celebrities such as Mark Wahlberg, Eminem and Wiz Khalifa — have sent thousands ofwater bottles to help. But now city officials are dealing with a new predicament: what to do with the mounting influx of discarded waste.

According to a , only 13 to 16 percent of Flint homeowners currently participate in curbside recycling, a portentous statistic of things to come as residents go through scores of disposable bottles for brushing their teeth, cooking, drinking and many other uses.

Filmmaker Michael Moore, who profiled the town in his documentary "Roger and Me," recentlyrequesting that people stop sending citizens plastic water bottles.

"You would have to send 200 bottles a day, per person, to cover what the average American (we are Americans in Flint) needs each day," Moore wrote. "That’s 102,000 citizens times 200 bottles of water – which equals 20.4 million 16 oz. bottles of water per day, every day, for the next year or two until this problem is fixed (oh, and we’ll need to find a landfill in Flint big enough for all those hundreds of millions of plastic water bottles, thus degrading the local environment even further). Anybody want to pony up for that? Because THAT is the reality."

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Meanwhile,Lieutenant Gov. Brian Calley assured environmentalists that the state government was doing all it could to prevent waste.

"While bottled water has been key to making sure residents have safe drinking water, it's important to make sure we're not harming our environment as a result," Calley said in a press conference last week. "The new recycling initiative brings together state, county and city partners to make sure we are keeping plastic bottles from entering landfills or littering Flint streets."

Several nonprofits and government officials have also attempted to assuage concerns by pointing to increased local efforts to expand recycling in the city.

"An aggressive recycling campaign has been initiated by a variety of support agencies," William Humes, a Michigan National Guard spokesman, told weather.com. "... The residents of Flint have a myriad of options available to them for recycling water bottles."

Keep Genesee County Beautiful, a waste reduction/recycling advocacynonprofit organization, told weather.com in an email that all of the gifted plastic water bottles can be converted into reusable material.

"All plastic water bottles and water cans can being distributed in Flint, Michigan, can be recycled," said Karen West, the group's lead consultant. "There has been a concerted effort to get the word out this past week with specific directions to all residents. We also have curbside recycling in the City of Flint. Keeping the millions of empty water bottles and cans out of the local landfill is something that all residents can do to make their own positive impact to clean up the environment."

Derek Bajema, president of the Michigan Soft Drink Association, also told weather.com that he was optimistic that resources were in place for a large scale recycling effort.

"The Lieutenant Governor and state recycling officials assured that the state recycling infrastructure in place is perfectly capable of handling the recycling of all the water bottles being sent to Flint residents who cannot drink tap water," Bajema said in an email. "... The water bottles are 100-percent recyclable, even the caps. ... Residents can either bring their empty bottles in a clear plastic bag to the distribution center where they picked up their water or they can put them in their curbside recycling bins, which Republic Waste Services will pick up. I understand that Republic will deliver a bin if they don’t have one."

In addition,Young's Environmental Cleanup, a local waste management company, announced on Facebook that they would accept the city's plastic bottles for free, though they are already being stretched in their ability to assist in the recycling effort.

"We have three containers that are three quarters full and we thus far have only emptied one of our 20 cubic yard roll off boxes which had 680 pounds of empty plastic water bottles per the scale ticket," Stephanie Young, Young's Environmental Cleanup operations manager, told weather.com in an email. "We did our own informal experiment, and we figure that an empty water bottle weighs approximately .4 ounces, so 40 bottles in a pound, so we are approximating that our first load to the recycling facility was +/- 27,200 bottles."

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Flint Water Crisis

Matt Hopper holds and comforts Nyla Hopper, age 5 of Flint, after she has her blood drawn to be tested for lead on January 26, 2016 at Eisenhower Elementary School in Flint, Michigan. (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)