INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Flint Family Estimates Use Of 151 Water Bottles Per Day

By Liz Kelley
Published on: 13:23 PST, Mar 6, 2016

A Flint family has recently stated that they use approximately 151 water bottles, per day.

In light of recent concerns over the excess of bottle-related trash, this report is both shocking and concerning.

The Luster family is currently suffering from the water crisis in Flint in more ways than one. According to CNN, Gina Luster, 41, said that she feels terrible for the suffering she sees her young daughter and niece go through as a result of the water contamination.

“It makes me feel like the lowest of the low. My self-esteem when it first began was so, so bad.”

Gina struggles to contain her emotion during this tumultuous and devastating time.

“You pull up to a place where you need this water, and the line is a mile long and you’re waiting in your car, praying you don’t run out of gas waiting, and you’ve got your kids in the car and they’re looking at you like ‘What are you going to do about this?'”

Luster claims that the water issue has led to problems with hair loss and rash in their family.

WCVB broke down the number of bottles into their assigned categories.

“36 bottles were used for cooking and another 36 were for washing hair. They used 27 bottles for drinking, plus 24 for doing dishes, and the rest were used for washing faces, brushing teeth and more.”

The approximate amount of water that the average American uses per day is 100 gallons. That comes out to about 757 water bottles, which is far more than the 50 per person to which the Luster family is asssigned.

Opening a water bottle for everything quickly gets tiring. The Lusters still use tap water to wash their hands, and visit Gina’s mother’s house in Swartz Creek to shower and wash their laundry.

Before the crisis was discovered, Gina Luster started noticing the effects of the contamination on her health, as well as that of her daughter, Kennedy, and niece Eeshyia (who lives with the family).

Gina herself lost 60 pounds and even collapsed at work. She went on medical leave following the incident.

“That fall, Luster’s medical records indicate doctors found cysts on her ovaries. She had a partial hysterectomy to remove the cysts, but the cause of the cysts was not cited,” CNN reported. “Unable to return to work, Luster lost her job. She had previously been making $38,000 a year, but now she was relying on odd part-time jobs and the graciousness of her family to make things work.”

Kennedy struggled with itchy, bleeding hands and hair loss. Eeshyia was plagued by rashes.

The Inquisitr reported in January that families in Flint were forced to used water bottles due to the contaminated water in the city. The large amount of plastic has forced the city to confront the problem of trash from the bottles.

“The bottled water donations certainly help the residents of Flint who cannot drink the water pumped into their homes. The new question is, what to do with the millions of plastic bottles that are about to become a whole new environmental problem for the region?”

While many bottles are being put in huge recycling bins, they cannot all escape landfills.

“What happens if a good portion of those water bottles end up in local landfills? According to Young’s Environmental Cleanup, a company that has been very instrumental in recent Flint recycling efforts, it can take up to 450 years to completely break down the plastic in the empty water bottles,” according to the Inquisitr.

“They warn that with the huge increase in bottled water coming into Flint coupled with the scant effort of local residents to recycle, an overflow of trash due to the Flint water crisis is a real problem.”

However, it is now obvious that the problem with the water bottles is not just the issue of recycling, but also how to provide Flint residents with clean, sanitary water, and with enough of it.

[Image by Sarah Rice/Getty Images]

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