The Environmental Impact of Organizations: A Pilot Test from the Packaging Industry Based on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations to the authors.

The most relevant aspects are the following:

The data are recent (2018-2019).

Authors must add sources to tables

The authors must explain in detail the methodology applied for the extraction of results. Readers may not understand how those results can be extracted and how they are analyzed. The methodology is not clear. Authors should expand this section.

Authors should include study limitations.

Authors should also include future lines of research.

Authors must include the research hypotheses.

Author Response

We thank the Reviewers for the insightful and constructive comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered and addressed them to improve the quality of our article. We hope that you will be satisfied with our responses and our revisions of the manuscript. In the revised version all the changes are highlighted, except typos and some minor language revisions.

Yours sincerely,

Raffaella Taddeo (Corresponding author)

Congratulations to the authors. The most relevant aspects are the following. The data are recent (2018-2019).

RESPONSE: First of all, we thank the reviewer for his/her comments on our manuscript. We considered them in our revision.

Authors must add sources to tables

RESPONSE: We added sources to our Tables. Where not present, it means “own elaboration”.

The authors must explain in detail the methodology applied for the extraction of results. Readers may not understand how those results can be extracted and how they are analyzed. The methodology is not clear. Authors should expand this section.

RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for highlighting this aspect. We agree that in the first version of the article the methodological aspects were unclear. Therefore, considering that the pilot test aims are also methodological, we have decided to redefine the structure of the article in order to dedicate more space to methodological issues for each phase of the O-LCA development (please see the new version of Sections 2 and 3).

Authors should include study limitations. Authors should also include future lines of research. Authors must include the research hypotheses.

RESPONSE: Section 4 (Discussion and conclusions) has been also revised and the two sub-sections dedicated to the limits and future developments of the study have been further improved. Also the research hypotheses have been more highlighted both at the beginning of Section 3 and Section 4.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

This article is unacceptable to me formally and scientifically in this state.

My professional questions:
- What allocation method did the authors use?
- Were normalization and weighting methods used? I did not find any reference to these.
- Transport distance and utilization during transport?

It would be good to mention numerical results in the Abstract! You don't need an abbreviated word in your keywords if you describe it longer. Name the standards exactly in the text !! In the Introduction, the first sentence refers to 5 references, but this is a general sentence.

I can accept the applied methodology together with the designated system boundaries. I also accept LCI. But I noticed gaps in methodology and LCI. In the impact assessment phase, as an LCA specialist, I do not fully understand why impact category values ​​are not analyzed by the authors. It would be advisable to present it through nice, colorful diagrams.

I consider it important that the authors review the formal requirements of the Sustainability journal! I suggest a list of abbreviations at the end of the article.

The number of literature is very small !! DOI numbers are missing. I would not miss the basic 14040 LCA standard. For the injection moulding phase, I suggest reviewing the following literature:
https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13050777

Chapter 4 must be revised. I do not find numerical scientific results in it.

 The quality of the figures and tables is not good! Font sizes and fonts are not uniform. Figure 2 is not scientifically relevant to the article either.

After a major revision, I can only accept this article, both scientifically and formally.

Author Response

We thank the Reviewers for the insightful and constructive comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered and addressed them to improve the quality of our article. We hope that you will be satisfied with our responses and our revisions of the manuscript. In the revised version all the changes are highlighted, except typos and some minor language revisions.

Yours sincerely,

Raffaella Taddeo (Corresponding author)

Dear Authors,

This article is unacceptable to me formally and scientifically in this state.

My professional questions:
- What allocation method did the authors use?
- Were normalization and weighting methods used? I did not find any reference to these.
- Transport distance and utilization during transport?

RESPONSE: Thanks to the reviewer for the helpful comments. As already highlighted in the previous answer, the whole methodological section has been revised and improved and a lot of information has been added. Furthermore, as this is a pilot test and considering the difficulties in finding some secondary data in the databases currently available, we have decided to stick to the minimum requirements set by the standards. Specifically, since the study refers to the entire organization, the cases of application of the allocation procedures are residual (for example the cleaning services in the two plants) and where present they have been made explicit. The normalization and weighting procedures, being optional, were not considered in this pilot study. Distances relating to transportation have been calculated case by case, by accessing company databases relating to purchases, sales and the origin of the organization's employees.

It would be good to mention numerical results in the Abstract! You don't need an abbreviated word in your keywords if you describe it longer. Name the standards exactly in the text !! In the Introduction, the first sentence refers to 5 references, but this is a general sentence.

RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for pointing out these aspects. Abstract has been revised and improved, in order not to exceed the length limits, we preferred not to report numerical values, but we have provided concrete examples of the results obtained.

The choice of using acronyms in keywords depends on the fact that, in this way, the article can be more easily searched both by using the methodology name in full and through the abbreviation. We believe that in this way our article has a better chance to appear in the searches of anyone interested.

Standards have been checked in the text.

Concerning the first sentence, we have now reduced the references at three.  

I can accept the applied methodology together with the designated system boundaries. I also accept LCI. But I noticed gaps in methodology and LCI. In the impact assessment phase, as an LCA specialist, I do not fully understand why impact category values ​​are not analyzed by the authors. It would be advisable to present it through nice, colorful diagrams.

RESPONSE: As already pointed out, the methodological section has been largely revised (please see the new version of Section 3) and also the figures and tables have been improved.

I consider it important that the authors review the formal requirements of the Sustainability journal! I suggest a list of abbreviations at the end of the article.

RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for this comment, but we would like to say that, in formatting the article, we used the template provided by Sustainability journal, that does not require either the list of abbreviations or even the DOI for references. However, to accommodate the reviewer’s requests, we decided to add the required information.

The number of literature is very small !! DOI numbers are missing. I would not miss the basic 14040 LCA standard. For the injection moulding phase, I suggest reviewing the following literature:
https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13050777

RESPONSE: Concerning the “number of literature”, we would like to underline that this article deals with a new and very recent topic; few are still the contributions present in the literature and the most significant ones for the purposes of our study have been cited.

As we wrote in the previous response, in the template provided by Sustainability journal, DOI numbers are not required; however, we decided to add this information to our reference list.

Basic 14040 LCA standard has now been mentioned.

The literature reference, suggested by the reviewer, has been added.

Chapter 4 must be revised. I do not find numerical scientific results in it.

RESPONSE: Following the reviewer’s suggestion, Section 4 has been revised and improved. Considering the goals of the study and the new structure of the article, many of the numerical scientific results have been mentioned in the Section 3, focusing the Discussion and conclusions sections on the methodological and applicative results.

The quality of the figures and tables is not good! Font sizes and fonts are not uniform. Figure 2 is not scientifically relevant to the article either.

RESPONSE: Following the reviewer’s suggestion, we tried to improve the quality of all the figures and tables. Figure 2 has been modified.

After a major revision, I can only accept this article, both scientifically and formally.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations to the authors! The authors have included all requested changes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,
thank you for accepting my suggestions and following them in rewriting the article. I know that the list of abbreviations and the DOI number are not a formal requirement for Sustainability (I regularly review this journal), I only intended my thoughts as a constructive suggestion. Sorry if I was misunderstood. I believe that this is how your scholarly work will find more readers in the future if they are inserted, I have only suggested it to you. This article has undergone significant change since its revision, both formally and scientifically. As for the keywords, I still don’t understand why the Authors write out the same concept in full text and abbreviated. I am thinking of O-LCA. The Editors, as far as this is allowed in this form, have no problem with it, I just don’t fully understand and haven’t seen it in such a dual form yet. Figure 2 is more appealing this way, I really like this form. I would like to mention one more thing, only as a constructive comment. I know this  research topic is new, but I still consider the literature used to be very small in number. it is recommended to check the English language. I wish the Authors a lot of success!