Life Cycle Thinking for a Circular Bioeconomy: Current Development, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The issue presented by the authors in this publication is very important and timely in the context of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The Circular Economy Action Plan is one of the main elements of the European Green Deal, adopted by the European Commission in March 2020. The literature review on Circular Bioeconomy and Life Cycle Thinking is very important in terms of their analysis of current developments, challenges and research trends. For this purpose, the authors used the PRISMA program, analyzing a portfolio of 57 documents. They identified five main goals and challenges in this regard: expanding borders, considering more checkpoints, developing and using regional databases, developing policies to encourage Circular Bioeconomy implementations, and analyzing economic and social issues. The work is very consistent. The following chapters are linked together in a logical and factually justified way. In my opinion, the most interesting chapter 3 presents a very detailed analysis and overview of the following topics: time evolution, geographical distribution of research, analysis of sources, type of biomass/biowaste and processes assessed, and the sustainability dimension covered by the research. The figures and tables show a substantively unambiguous picture of the current development, challenges and research trends in the field of Circular Bioeconomy and Life Cycle Thinking. In the following chapters, no less interesting, they showed what challenges and development prospects this sector faces. In their conclusions, they rightly point out that this sector should be analyzed in the broadest possible aspect, also by creating appropriate legal regulations in this area. I rate the article submitted for review as a review very highly and should be accepted for publication in its current form.

Author Response

Dear reviewer.

We are thankful for your comments. We really appreciate them, and they encourage us to continue researching the sustainability of a circular bioeconomy.

Kindest regards.

The authors.

Reviewer 2 Report

May be accepted 

Author Response

Dear reviewer.

We are thankful for your comments. We really appreciate them, and they encourage us to continue researching the sustainability of a circular bioeconomy.

Kindest regards.

The authors.

Reviewer 3 Report

Reviewer #1: The following major revisions are required:-
1. Abstract and introduction sections must be revised for better readability.
2. The proposed methodology is not clear. Please revised this section also for better novelty by using recent optimization technique or ant lion optimization techniques for improvement of manuscript.
3. Conclusions and future scope also revised for better readability and utilities point of views.

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Grammer and English errors should be eliminated from the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear reviewer.

We are thankful for your comments; they contributed to the enhancement of this manuscript. We hereupon explained the response to your major revisions:

1. The abstract and introduction were revised to make them more readable, and the English grammar and writing were also reviewed;
2. The methodology was revised to make it clearer, the Figure 1 (in line 185) was replaced. However, the second part of your comment could not be addressed because this manuscript used the PRISMA statement as the methodology for systematic review since it is imperative for review papers in this journal;
3. The readability of the conclusions was also revised (lines 1262 to 1308), and to attend to the utilities points of view, we added the sixth section, "Implications for the stakeholders."

We thank you again for your comments and hope to have attended them.

Kindest regards.

The authors.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Major revisions are:-

1. Mplease mention the research gap in introduction section. 

2. The proposed methodology is not clear.  Please utilise recent methodology for better novelty of the manuscript. 

3. Results and discussions section must be revised for better readability. 

Average 

Author Response

Dear reviewer.

We are thankful for your comments. Thus, we supply hereupon the point-by-point response:

1. Please mention the research gap in introduction section.

• The research gap was described in lines 62-75.

2. The proposed methodology is not clear.  Please utilise recent methodology for better novelty of the manuscript.

• As we explained before, we used the PRISMA statement as the methodology for the literature review since it is mandatory for this journal. The last version of PRISMA was published in 2020; thus, it is a recent methodology. If it is unsatisfactory for you, we beg you to be more specific on your comment.

3. Results and discussions section must be revised for better readability.

• The results and discussion sections have been revised for better readability.

We thank you again for your comments and hope to answer all of them.

Kindest regards.

The authors.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Accepted for the publication