Laundry Habits in Bangkok: Use Patterns of Products and Services
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors present an interesting case of laundering practices and use of product service systems in Bangkok and discuss the environmental implications of these consumer practices. To my knowledge, no similar study has been published before and this is thus an interesting contribution to the research field.
However, I have some comments that I wish the authors could address. Some comments are related to the general cultural differences and infrastructures, as some aspects may be self-explanatory for the authors but may seem odd to a western reader that has never been to Asia (such as habit of hand washing before laundering – why washing twice?).
1. Abstract: Please explain abbreviation PSS at first time it is mentioned (first line of abstract)
2. Line 42: please explain what you mean by “greater economies of scale in the use stage”
3. Line 109: When dormitories had laundry rooms, did you count respondents that lived there to have PW?
4. Line 115: How were the in-depth interviews recorded?
5. Line 119/table 1: Could you provide some information about gender and age distribution of respondents?
6. Line 130 figure 2: Where are the respondents that only use hand wash?
7. Line 139: How come PWs won’t have place for jeans or sweaters? According to data presented later the PWs are large and can handle many kgs of laundry? (line232)
8. Line 152: For LS, did you separate between regular laundering and dry-cleaning in use of laundry services? These two alternatives (and the various versions of types of dry-clean and professional wet cleaning) have quite different environmental impacts. If these types of LS do not provide dry-cleaning, please include this information in the text.
9. Lines 161-163: some repetition from method section.
10. Line 175: Did you record the number of hand-wash occasions per year?
11. Line178: Aren’t there also respondents that hand wash only?
12. Line 178 a) Why are people washing laundry twice, first by hand and then in machine (line 178)? Are the machines so bad? Is that what you mean with need for improvement in laundry quality (line 313)?
13. Lines 198-203 and Figure 6: Why are there more respondents that feel that it is necessary to use tumble-drier than there are those that actually do it? Is it because the percentages in figure 6b would only be based on those respondents that use tumble drier?
14. Line 217/figure 7: Why people with PW say that they do not have a washer? (in reading conclusions I understood that these might be those that have own machine back at home but not in Bangkok, if this is the case, please explain this already by the figure)
15. Lines 220-222: Usually there are big differences between types of clothing in how many times they are worn before laundering, such as underwear and socks are used usually only once or twice, while coats can easily be worn a season or even longer before cleaning. Did you specify what kind of clothes you meant when you asked the respondents about washing frequency?
16. Line 233 – What does it mean that consumers do not control the water temperature in the washing machine? Will the water be cold, lukewarm or pre-heated? Is there an option to use warm water in laundering, and if there is, how is the water heated? (Does the machine do it, or is it connected to heated water?)
17. Line 257 Figure 8b: did 100% of all respondents always hand wash?
18. Line 287 Table 2: also explain HW
19. General for table and figures: it would be helpful if all of the captions included number of respondents that is used as basis for the data (N=xxx)
Additionally, there are some minor errors in grammar that should be checked before final publication.
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
It is never made clear in the paper how the data collected in the study demonstrates what the actual impact to the environment is or could be. There is no identification of the problem nor suggestions for how the data might reveal areas for improvement. As such, the paper is merely a quantification of information; no meaningful speculative conclusions were drawn from the results.
The lack of how the research is situated begs several questions:
1. How do laundry habits in Bangkok (in terms of water consumption) impact their water supply?
2. How does the use of laundry detergents affect their water quality?
3. How much energy used to power the service equipment, and what is its source (renewable? fossil fuel?)
4. What kind of conservation efforts are currently in place or should be implemented as a result of this study?
If an analysis of environmental implications has been left for future research (as stated in the abstract), then it should not be so stated in the title of the paper; rather it should allude to the 'potential for environmental impacts' to make clear the limited scope of the paper.
Comments on style:
1. Do not use the acronym PSS before defining the term (abstract line 10)
2. The format for Table 1 makes it difficult to glean the information
3. A list of all acronyms at the beginning of the paper would be helpful
4. "interviewee" should be plural (line 222)
5. "washer" misspelled (Figure 7)
Author Response
"Please see the attachment."
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Several typos still need to be corrected: line 71: 'Compared' line 130: 'indicate' line 166: remove 'the' before 'Bangkok' line 196: replace 'wash by their hands' with 'wash by hand' line 216: add 'respectively' to end of sentence line 301: 'Twenty-four' (when used at start of sentence) line 303: 'This' line 319: 'have the following' line 320: 'washers' lines 325, 326, 327: 'tumble-dryers' line 361: 'have been analyzed' line 362: word missing after 'significant' line 361-362: 'clarify behavioral factors in Bangkok and their impacts' While I think that the authors have sufficiently addressed the comments I raised earlier, I would still argue that the title is misleading in that, as a preliminary study, it offers an analysis of laundry habits, and only alludes to their environmental implications. The paper is more accurately a presentation of behavioral factors; however, while the title implies different content, I will defer to the editor to make the final decision in this matter.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
