Societal Involvement in Household Waste Sorting Behavior in the Context of the Circular Economy: A Case Study of Poland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 The research aimed to analyze the motivation, knowledge, and behavior of Polish respondents in municipal waste sorting, serving as a case study for broader waste management insights.  The article is well written and suitable for Sustainability Journal. Before submitting the final version, I have only few constructive comments for the authors to consider. 

1- For Figures 1-3, within the text, the authors mentioned to a and b in the Figures, please add labels "a" and "b" on each corresponding part of the figures.

2- Choose another title for Figure 4 to make it more informative.

3- The conclusion is too long, please shorten it with focusing on the applicability of your results 

The manuscript exhibits proficient English language usage. I recommend the authors thoroughly review the entire document for any potential typos before submitting the final version.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Our responses to your comments can be found in the attachment.

with Regards

Justyna Rogowska&co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I'm grateful for the opportunity to review and offer insights on the article titled “Society involvement in the household waste sorting behavior in context of circular economy: case study of Poland”.  

This proposed article represents a new approach in the field of sustainable waste management system for EU with direct highlights over the Polish current situation. Furthermore, the submitted manuscript is well-organized and written appropriately. Results are clearly and logically presented through a combination of visuals and text, enhancing the exploration of research findings. The inclusion of pertinent figures and tables is consistent with the explanations provided in the text.

Moreover, there are some observations that should be addressed in this revision.

- Please add one idea about the novelty factor of the study in the Abstract and to whom is this information useful (target group or publics)

- Line 220-221 please add information about the period (months/ year) of the collected data from the survey

- many of the results of the descriptive statistics are compared to other research from EU and international contexts (inhabitants of Zagreb (Croatia), residents of Nitra City in Slovak Republic, a group of Swedish and Bulgarian students, etc). Please specify what is the reason of this comparison and if the European context and the specific EU regulations are comparable for the Polish population in the same manner with the results used from the international context (residents of Xiamen City in China, Bangkok, a survey conducted among residents of ten cities in China, among Abadan residents (Iran) etc). Is the comparison possible with different regulations?

If this is problematic, then maybe from the international context a set of useful ideas can be extracted and suggested as future directions applicable in the European Union.

- please explain with the title starts with the idea of “Society involvement”, but the construction of the questionnaire includes only the perceptions of the Polish citizens' individual involvement. Did the authors use an operationalization of the concepts for generating the questions and to measure the specific variables?

not the case

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Our responses to your comments can be found in the attachment.

with Regards

Justyna Rogowska&co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors focus on the motivation, knowledge and behaviour of Polish citizens regarding the segregation of municipal waste. The study is based on an anonymous survey. 

Main problems:

The paper is not structured according to the usual scheme for scientific papers, i.e. results are not separated from the discussion. This must be revised.

A comparsion with the results of separate collection in Poland is missing. The authors illustrate what people want to do and what they claim to do. The question remains as to how this is reflected in the results of the collection. It is well known from the literature that real behaviour differs significantly from the claims.

The questions of the survey should be added in a Table. It should be indicated which questions / answers were most important for the evaluation.

The statistical significance of the survey must be discussed properly.

The sources of regulations in the text should be transferred to the list of references.

Further comments:

Abtsract and introduction: In the introduction, the authors call Circ. Econ. as a new tool for sustainability, but their paper is dealing with recycling - that is only a part of Circ. Econ. This is also not an alternative to waste management (line 31), but a completion. The authors should use the legal definition of Circ. Econ., which can be found in the Taxonomy Regulation . What is the 3R rule (line 43)? Any source in the literature for this statment? The authors are not familiar with the development of waste management (lines 44 ff.). Besides voluntary schemes for business there were a lot of recycling activities already in the 80ies either motivated by lack of primary resources or as a conseqence of environmental awareness, e.g. in German and French cities or the SERO system in the former GDR.

Methods: What are PSZOKS (line 166)? Please explain. FRiends of the authors (line 246)? Please clarify!

Results: Some more tables for the presentation of the results would enhance the understanding.

Discussion: The results from this survey and studies from abroad (lines 380 ff.) cannot be compared with each other because neither the systems are known (similar to Poland or not) nor the information level is comparable. Any questions concerning residual waste in the biowaste bin (line 480)? This is a critical problem discussed by many authors but has not been checked in this survey.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Our responses to your comments can be found in the attachment.

with Regards

Justyna Rogowska&co-authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised version of the paper “Society involvement in the household waste sorting behavior in context of circular economy: case study of Poland”.   

The authors responded and explained with reasonable arguments and corrected all the remarks and observations highlighted in the previous review and the results suggest a more consistent, publishable and logical text.   

To sum it up, the authors developed a more in-depth theoretical presentation about the subject, including a corrected Abstract, integrating the suggested aspects of the review and a more consistent bibliographical list.

I consider that the paper is publishable after a final check from the authors.  

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for careful discussion of my comments and suggestions!