Unraveling the Role of Plastic Waste Pollution in the Amvrakikos Wetlands National Park, Greece: The Stakeholders’ Views

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments

General

• The introduction contains a lot of information on plastic pollution that is not specific to this region, or novel information. I suggest that it be heavily edited to make it shorted and specific to this paper.
• For surveys it is typical that an ethics review is done by a Research Ethics Board. Was this done?
• Was a pilot of the survey completed in order to understand if the questions posed were asking the intended questions?
• The authors need to explain more about what qualified these people to take this survey, and thus what proportion of the stakeholder group these results represent? Is it a quarter of those identified?
• This study is very interesting as it asks about different environmental stressors, sources, and responsibilities. The information is very useful in terms of building strategic plans to mitigate plastic pollution in the region.
• The use of the phrase, "on the other hand..." needs to be proceeded with a statement that starts with "On one hand..." This should be adjusted in the paper.
• These are not opinions of just the general populace of the region, therefore there is a few places that the language in the text needs to be more specific. These are attitudes of a specific group pf people, these may not actually be wide-spread beliefs. The authors need to discuss more the limitations of the viewpoints of this particular study. What can we say from this data, who it can be extrapolated to, and who it can not.

Specific

Line 19 - Suggest using marine litter or marine debris instead of sea litter, these terms are more often used in the literature, and will be recognized by readers.

Line 19 – rephrase this sentence, starting with While….. leads to the reader to expect a second clause that doesn’t come in this case.

Line 23 – what is ICT?

Line 49 – Plastic waste is plural, no need for an s.

Table 1 – I think you mean freelancer, not free launcher

Line 261 – reword, things are not proven often in science.

Author Response

We have attached a letter replying to all your comments and suggestions . Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper addresses an interesting current issue, the role of plastic waste pollution, and is well motivated and documented. But in my opinion it has three important drawbacks:

1. The questionnaire seems to be designed ad-hoc and so there is no reference framework against which to compare the results. It should be important to mention if the authors know about application of the same or similar questionnaires in other places that could be currently used to inform public policies.
2. Although in section 2 the authors refer that they have made a screening procedure to identify the key stakeholders (they say that 48 units were identified, including municipalities, aquaculture units, fishermen associations, environmental centers, development agencies and higher education–research institute), it is not clear what the true composition of these stakeholders is. It is also not clear what criteria were used to select these stakeholders. It should be interesting to know which part of the regional economy, or local labor force, education, etc is represented by the selected stakeholders, to have a view of their true importance.
3. The sample size (23 persons) is small. Although authors say that they represent almost the 50% of the stakeholders,  nothing is said about what they represent. For example, we see that 47.8% are civil servants, but we do not know if they occupy relevant positions in environmental management; we do not know if the three fishermen in the sample are truly representative of the opinion of the fishermen in the region (there is no information about how many fishermen are there). Even it is not clear if the pensioner is representing the thinking of pensioners in the region

Some of the demographic characteristics of the sample (marital status, number of children) should be interesting if the study were to look for the impact of these characteristics on the opinion about environmental problems (but in that case it should be a different survey with different participants), and it does not seem relevant in this case. It should be more informative to include a table with the number and weight of stakeholders in each field (administration, agriculture, fisheries, ...)

In summary, the study is interesting and the findings could be used to guide efficient planning of the environmental manage of the region, but what is not clear is if the sample used is representative of an important fraction of the stakeholders.

Other comments

• Figures in tables should be revised. For example, in table 3.2 percentages of different professions add up to 121%
• In line 229 authors say that they have collected 22 questionnaires, but in all tables they refer to 23.
• Tables 2,3, 4 and 5 should be simplified; percent and valid percent are equal so the column of valid percent is not necessary. Cumulative percent column is also unnecesary.

Author Response

We have addressed all your comments and suggestions, please look at the attached file 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I think authors have improved the contents of the paper by including information that was missing in the previous version, specially in regards to who was really represented by the stakeholders in the sample. Although the sample is small, due to the composition of the population and the regional socioeconomic structure now better described by the authors,  it can be considered as sufficiently informative in a first attempt to understand the problems related to the waste managements system in the studied zone and help guide public policies on this issue