Strategies to Strengthen Integrated Solid Waste Management in Small Municipalities
, Eduardo Castillo-González 2 and Mario Rafael Giraldi-Díaz 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1) First of all, please recheck the grammatical errors, some of the sentences do not make sense.
2) A lot of the same studies have been carried out in Mexico and this paper is a bit repetitive. This paper also lacks novelty. If you can highlight it, it would be great and I would be happy to proceed with publication.
3) I attached the comments by line for the context of the content.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1:
The authors would like to thank you for your time and valuable comments to improve our MS. Here we present our answers and all the changes have been highlighted in yellow along the MS.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
1. First of all, please recheck the grammatical errors, some of the sentences do not make sense.
Done. We have rechecked the grammatical errors.
2. A lot of the same studies have been carried out in Mexico and this paper is a bit repetitive. This paper also lacks novelty. If you can highlight it, it would be great, and I would be happy to proceed with publication.
In response to this comment, our MS focused on the problem of solid waste management and the strategies required for its attention in small municipalities (less than 50,000 inhabitants), emphasizing the stakeholders involved, for that reason, it was necessary to adjust both the title and the general objective. The above is to make it more attractive and point out the novelty for the readers of the Journal.
We also highlighted along the MS the main problems for small municipalities (less than 50,000 inhabitants) regarding waste management and we also include strategies to address these issues using for example inter-municipal associations and the formal incorporation of scavengers into the waste management system.
3. I attached the comments by line for the context of the content.
We have considered all your comments.
- We improved the abstract.
- We included all the references. The number of references increased from 34 to 56.
- We included different kind of treatments in the introduction section.
- We added the definition of circular economy in the introduction section.
- We included novelty and research gaps for this study in the introduction section.
- We improved our methodology, and we added a diagram.
- We added individual percentages of waste composition in Mexico.
- We modified the references, to show only the corresponding number.
- We changed the words “source-separated” by “segregated” as per your recommendation.
- We improved the section about the municipal level.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1- Professional proofreading is required. There are many typos and grammatical errors within the whole manuscript. For instance, in the abstract, line 14, level should be levels, etc.
2- In the abstract section, the novelty and contribution of the research should be highlighted.
3- In the first sentence of the introduction section, the authors have written “The world generates 2.01 billion tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) per year of 31 which at least 33% is not managed in an environmentally safe manner”. How did you reach this? presenting such statistics needs reference. Is there any reference for this? the same comment for the second sentence “Global waste is 32 expected to grow to 3.40 billion tons by 2050”. And also, for this sentence “Mexico is the 5th largest country in the Americas and the 14th largest country in the 61 world, with a total area of almost 2 million square kilometers”. Please be more careful with such issues and double-check the manuscript to address relevant references.
4- The introduction section is very poor. It does not read well, and we do not get any information about the research gap, the main objective of the research, and the expected contribution. Please revisit this section and try to rewrite the introductions section with a better and clearer flow.
5- The authors have not properly reviewed the target literature. A huge amount of research has been published in this field of research. You need to provide a short section after the introduction section to present a general overview of the literature in this area. In this regard, you might address the following articles, titled “two decades of research on waste management in the circular economy: Insights from bibliometric, text mining, and content analyses”, “waste management beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: bibliometric and text mining analyses”, “exergetic sustainability analysis of municipal solid waste treatment systems: a systematic critical review”, “biomass and organic waste potentials towards implementing circular bioeconomy platforms: a systematic bibliometric analysis”, and “college students’ attitude towards waste separation and recovery on campus”.
6- In the methodology section, the authors claim that “A brief review of data of previous research by the authors 93 serves as a background to understand what happens at the local level”. But you have not named any references here. Please clearly cite the relevant references.
7- Why Etzatlán municipality has been chosen for the third step? Does it have any reason? Please explain and justify.
8- Overall, the method is not clear and does not read well. Please try to provide a better justification and explanation of the steps. In this vein, presenting a diagram to better catch the details is highly acknowledged.
9- Abbreviations should be introduced once. For instance, you have introduced Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the introduction section, and again you have repeated this in the results section. Please check all abbreviations for this issue.
10- Unify the font of the manuscript. A mix of fonts has been used. For instance, the font of Table 5 is different.
11- My main concern is regarding the results section. There is no critical discussion of the results. What the authors have done sounds like a simple reporting of the statistics. It is not clear what is your contribution. Just providing the statistics without any analysis or elaboration? This is not enough for publication in an academic journal. More need to be done.
12- How about the limitations of the research? Moreover, the authors should formulate some potential research avenues for further developments in the future based on their findings.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2:
The authors would like to thank you for your time and valuable comments to improve our MS. Here we present our answers and all the changes have been highlighted in yellow along the MS.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
1. Professional proofreading is required. There are many typos and grammatical errors within the whole manuscript. For instance, in the abstract, line 14, level should be levels, etc.
Done. We have rechecked the grammatical errors.
2. In the abstract section, the novelty and contribution of the research should be highlighted.
In response to this comment, our MS focused on the problem of solid waste management and the strategies required for its attention in small municipalities (less than 50,000 inhabitants), emphasizing the stakeholders involved, for that reason, it was necessary to adjust both the title and the general objective. The above is to make it more attractive and point out the novelty for the readers of the Journal.
We highlighted in the abstract and along the MS the main problems for small municipalities (less than 50,000 inhabitants) regarding waste management and we also include strategies to address these issues using for example inter-municipal associations and the formal incorporation of scavengers into the waste management system.
3. In the first sentence of the introduction section, the authors have written “The world generates 2.01 billion tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) per year of 31 which at least 33% is not managed in an environmentally safe manner”. How did you reach this? presenting such statistics needs reference. Is there any reference for this? the same comment for the second sentence “Global waste is 32 expected to grow to 3.40 billion tons by 2050”. And also, for this sentence “Mexico is the 5th largest country in the Americas and the 14th largest country in the 61 world, with a total area of almost 2 million square kilometers”. Please be more careful with such issues and double-check the manuscript to address relevant references.
We have added all the references and we have rechecked all the MS.
4. The introduction section is very poor. It does not read well, and we do not get any information about the research gap, the main objective of the research, and the expected contribution. Please revisit this section and try to rewrite the introductions section with a better and clearer flow.
We have improved the introduction section. We also included information about the research gap and the main objective of the research and the expected contribution.
5. The authors have not properly reviewed the target literature. A huge amount of research has been published in this field of research. You need to provide a short section after the introduction section to present a general overview of the literature in this area. In this regard, you might address the following articles, titled “two decades of research on waste management in the circular economy: Insights from bibliometric, text mining, and content analyses”, “waste management beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: bibliometric and text mining analyses”, “exergetic sustainability analysis of municipal solid waste treatment systems: a systematic critical review”, “biomass and organic waste potentials towards implementing circular bioeconomy platforms: a systematic bibliometric analysis”, and “college students’ attitude towards waste separation and recovery on campus”.
We have added all the articles you suggested and in addition, we included 22 new references, thus, the number of references increased from 34 to 56.
6. In the methodology section, the authors claim that “A brief review of data of previous research by the authors 93 serves as a background to understand what happens at the local level”. But you have not named any references here. Please clearly cite the relevant references.
We have improved the methodology section and we added a diagram.
7. Why Etzatlán municipality has been chosen for the third step? Does it have any reason? Please explain and justify.
Politically Mexico is organized into 3 levels of government: national, state, and municipal, so we decided to present an overview of each level in order of hierarchy. Etzatlán is a small municipality (less than 50,000 inhabitants), with the typical situation of most of the municipalities in Mexico and in other developing countries. This information has been explained in the methodology section and in section 3.3.
8. Overall, the method is not clear and does not read well. Please try to provide a better justification and explanation of the steps. In this vein, presenting a diagram to better catch the details is highly acknowledged.
Done. We have improved the methodology section and we added a diagram as per your recommendation.
9. Abbreviations should be introduced once. For instance, you have introduced Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the introduction section, and again you have repeated this in the results section. Please check all abbreviations for this issue.
Done. We have rechecked all the abbreviations along the MS.
10. Unify the font of the manuscript. A mix of fonts has been used. For instance, the font of Table 5 is different.
Done. We have rechecked all the fonts according to the Journal template.
11. My main concern is regarding the results section. There is no critical discussion of the results. What the authors have done sounds like a simple reporting of the statistics. It is not clear what is your contribution. Just providing the statistics without any analysis or elaboration? This is not enough for publication in an academic journal. More need to be done.
We have improved the discussion results along the MS and we have added new information to strengthen our article.
12. How about the limitations of the research? Moreover, the authors should formulate some potential research avenues for further developments in the future based on their findings
In the conclusion section, we have included new information for further research.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks for your responses and all the best for the publication.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1:
Once again, Thank you so much for your valuable comments!!
Kind regards,
The Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks to the authors for significantly revising their manuscript. My concerns and comments have been properly addressed and I can recommend the paper for publication now.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2:
Once again, Thank you so much for your valuable comments!!
Kind regards,
The Authors
