Circular Economy as a Catalyst for Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals: A Positive Relationship between Two Self-Sufficient Variables

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Overall, the article is interesting. On the other hand, it is quite general. I think the manuscript should contain more examples. When you describe a particular branch of the market, you should give more details. It is also good to add whether the actions taken so far are aimed at sustainable development. Review the entire manuscript step by step.

Detailed comments below:

Line 18: There is no need to detail in the abstract. I think the numbers 6, 8, 12, 15 are not needed at this point. These should be fully explained in the "methods" chapter.

Also, why 6, 8, 12 and 15? Do these numbers come from something?

Line 97: You should explain what this method is about.

Line 349: It is worth showing some alternatives at this point. In general, adding agro-food industry waste to the soil is beneficial. Unfortunately, their quantity and storage are often a problem. Therefore, other ways of managing such waste are sought. One of them is the production of modern biodegradable biocomposites from such waste. Because they are produced from biocomposites, often utility products are worth mentioning about this trend. This is important in terms of sustainable development and the recently fashionable "zero waste" ideology. Check out the article: "The rape pomace and microcrystalline cellulose composites made by press processing". Of course, there are many more publications in this field.

Going forward. Some agri-food by-products are added to food. It is also a very interesting trend in terms of sustainable development. View this publication: “By-products from brewery industry as the attractive additives to the extruded cereals food”, “Review: Food industry by-products used as a functional food ingredients” . Specifying any points of this work will make the work clearer.

Line 406: Conclusions are well done.

Author Response

Please see attached files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The first section of the manuscript is entitled "Introduction and state of the art". The content of the section does not justify the latter.

I also think that the authors have not adequately explained how they ended up with the "correlation between CE and SDGs". Figure 1 does not seem to be the result of a convincing sequence of arguments. I would also suggest that the part on "self-sufficiency of the CE and the SDGs" should precede. I must say that in this part the analysis is a lot better.
There are some typos and the authors should check carefully the manuscript (e.g. line 163: Scheme 45; lines 314, 317, 369, 374, 384: the numbering).

Author Response

Please see attached files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

well written and interesing paper

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The only significant amendment made by the authors is the improvement of Table 1. I am afraid to notice that all the other comments with respect to the ideas discussed in this article have not been resolved. Therefore, I cannot recommend the article for publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

I am so sorry for not having sent the right version of the document. It is a terrible mistake that I would like to solve. 

In this new version, we have included your suggestion and corrected some other typos. We have used the services of an official translator, to verify the correction in the use of English. We have found that the use of the term "correlation" may be misleading, even when it is explained that we use not statistical speaking, but in the sense of relationship. 

We have been thinking about your suggestion that the part on"self-sufficiency of the CE and the SDGs" should precede the "correlation" part". In our opinion, we consider first the relationship among them and then the "independence" between variables. Honestly, we consider that this is the sequence to be followed in this paper. 

I hope you realised the respect we have towards your time, comments and useful suggestion. 

Best regards

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors should not refer to "state of the art" in the first section of the manuscript. It is just an introduction. They should also modify their objectives' part. They cannot employ the terminology used in statistics to define hypotheses without using statistics. Instead, they should use a qualitative approach to define their objectives.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Please, find below a point-by-point response:

R2-The authors should not refer to "state of the art" in the first section of the manuscript. It is just an introduction.

A: The term state of the art has been deleted

R2:They should also modify their objectives' part.

A: We have adapted them. As hypothesis is what is beneath a tesis, we keep on using th

R2: They cannot employ the terminology used in statistics to define hypotheses without using statistics. Instead, they should use a qualitative approach to define their objectives.

A: Even though we had already included in the text that statistical methods were not going to be used to solve the problems reached, it seems that this point should be made even clearer. That is why we eliminate the term “correlation” and use, where appropriate, the term “relationship”. In the case of self-sufficiency, we keep it since it is not a term for exclusive use in statistics and its conceptualization adequately expresses what we want to explain in the text, in the sense of independent or “not requiring or relying on something else : not contingent”

The heuristic methodology by Polya is a qualitative method itself, but we have emphasized it

We hope we have fully taken your suggestions into account.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf