PET-Bottled Water Consumption in View of a Circular Economy: The Case Study of Salento (South Italy)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is presenting the results of a survey on the type of water consumed in a region of Italy (Lecce area). It doesn’t develop anything new, just the finding that in the studied region the average consumption of  PET-bottled mineral water is much higher (357.2 L per capita/year) than the Italian average (206 L per capita/year).

1. Abstract and conclusions should better reflect the relevance of the findings; What is new?; Is there any reason why in the studied region the consumption of PET-bottled mineral water is 73% higher than the average?

Discussion and Conclusions section, should present a reasoning for this.

2. Also, different average values are presented along the text related to consumption of bottled mineral water: 357.2 L per capita/year of PET-bottled water or 387 L of bottled water; in the summary (lines 24-26) and in the results (line 212) and Italian averages of 206 L per capita/year of PET-bottled water in the conclusions (line 250) or 221 L per capita /year in the introduction (line 55). All those numbers should appear together in the “Discussion and Conclusions” section with, at least, an hypothesis explaining those differences.
3. In the introduction authors should refer more deeply to “marine littering”, which is an environmental impact of utmost concern related to plastic packaging. The following reference can help:

Didem Civancik-Uslu, Rita Puig, Michael Hauschild and Pere Fullana-i-Palmer. 2019. Life cycle assessment of carrier bags and development of a littering indicator. Science of the Total Environment, 685, 621-630.

4. Lines 278-279. Authors are suggesting the use of glass packaging instead of plastic, while they are not evaluating the environmental impacts of glass packaging used in such amounts. Environmental impact of glass packaging may be higher than the one of plastic in aspects like transport and energy consumption in recycling process, among others. Authors say: “to adopt lifestyle choice in line with circular economy, limiting the use of plastic, preferring glass packaging…”. I totally disagree with this sentence.
5. Lines 290-293. In line with the above observation, the following sentence should be re-written: “In conclusion, being conscious of negative impacts on health and environment, due to the massive consumption of plastic bottles water, considering the environmental costs due to the recycled glass pathways, the best strategy in order to implement good practice of circular economy, is to enhance the supply from public drinking water and the reuse of glass “. If the packaging is really reused it could be plastic and/or glass packaging; a life cycle assessment should be performed to find-out advantages and drawbacks for each type of packaging. No advice should be made favouring one of the materials without making a rigorous environmental assessment.

Other minor comments:

 

6. Volume of water was expressed in litres in the manuscript and was abbreviated as [l], instead of [L] as it should be in the internationally agreed system. Please correct it in the whole document.

 

7. English should be revised along the manuscript. Some examples:

Line 97. “In order to reduce the number of plastic bottles, its necessary to take into account the main reasons which lead consumers’ choice towards ….”. Should be “it is”.

Line 276. “Actually, it has been demonstrated negative impact on human health cause by the overuse of plastics bottles …”. Should be “caused by”.

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we would like to express our appreciation for your review suggestions. We are grateful that the manuscript has been considered to have the potential to be published in the Sustainability journal.

We have assumed the changes you have signed and we have made the following asked modifications.

 

Abstract and conclusions should better reflect the relevance of the findings; What is new?; Is there any reason why in the studied region the consumption of PET-bottled mineral water is 73% higher than the average?

Discussion and Conclusions section, should present a reasoning for this.

In lines 312-378 we highlighted the possible reasons about the high bottled water consumption in Province of Lecce, respect the national average. Moreover, we emphasized our findings in relation to the environmental impact derived from the close connection of our territory and the sea.

Also, different average values are presented along the text related to consumption of bottled mineral water: 357.2 L per capita/year of PET-bottled water or 387 L of bottled water; in the summary (lines 24-26) and in the results (line 212) and Italian averages of 206 L per capita/year of PET-bottled water in the conclusions (line 250) or 221 L per capita /year in the introduction (line 55). All those numbers should appear together in the “Discussion and Conclusions” section with, at least, a hypothesis explaining those differences.

 

• 2 L refers to the consumption of PET-bottled water, in the area of interest;
• 387 L refers to the consumption of bottled water (both in PET or in glass), in the area of interest;
• According to reviewer’s indication, we have changed the wrong national data in the introduction section (line 54).

 

In the introduction authors should refer more deeply to “marine littering”, which is an environmental impact of utmost concern related to plastic packaging. The following reference can help:

Didem Civancik-Uslu, Rita Puig, Michael Hauschild and Pere Fullana-i-Palmer. 2019. Life cycle assessment of carrier bags and development of a littering indicator. Science of the Total Environment, 685, 621-630.                                                                                            

In the revised version of the manuscript, we have discussed the “marine littering” deeply and we in line with the suggested paper (lines 83-93).

Lines 278-279. Authors are suggesting the use of glass packaging instead of plastic, while they are not evaluating the environmental impacts of glass packaging used in such amounts. Environmental impact of glass packaging may be higher than the one of plastic in aspects like transport and energy consumption in recycling process, among others. Authors say: “to adopt lifestyle choice in line with circular economy, limiting the use of plastic, preferring glass packaging…”. I totally disagree with this sentence.

According to reviewer’s indication, in the revised version of the manuscript we have modified our sentence (line 396-398)

Lines 290-293. In line with the above observation, the following sentence should be re-written: “In conclusion, being conscious of negative impacts on health and environment, due to the massive consumption of plastic bottles water, considering the environmental costs due to the recycled glass pathways, the best strategy in order to implement good practice of circular economy, is to enhance the supply from public drinking water and the reuse of glass “. If the packaging is really reused it could be plastic and/or glass packaging; a life cycle assessment should be performed to find-out advantages and drawbacks for each type of packaging. No advice should be made favouring one of the materials without making a rigorous environmental assessment.

We have modified the final sentence as you suggested (line 406)

Other minor comments:

Volume of water was expressed in litres in the manuscript and was abbreviated as [l], instead of [L] as it should be in the internationally agreed system. Please correct it in the whole document.

English should be revised along the manuscript. Some examples:

Line 97. “In order to reduce the number of plastic bottles, its necessary to take into account the main reasons which lead consumers’ choice towards ….”. Should be “it is”.

Line 276. “Actually, it has been demonstrated negative impact on human health cause by the overuse of plastics bottles …”. Should be “caused by”.

English was checked.

We would like to thank the reviewer for its useful comments which ensured a real advancement of our research.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you very much for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled „PET-bottled Water Consumption In View of a Circular Economy: the Case Study of Salento (South Italy)“. The article is overall well-written, and it is of interest for the readership of Sustainability journals as it discusses the drinking water consumption habits, with particular reference to PET-bottled water, of people living in the province of Lecce.

The context of the study is very well presented and the objectives are properly justified.

I would like to encourage authors to consider several issues to be improved. I believe that after incorporating these issues, your paper will have a value for this journal. I hope that my comments are useful for authors, as they further develop the manuscript.

First, I strongly recommend the authors to move the part presenting the sample distribution in the Materials and Methods section.

Second, I think that the part presenting the results of the logistic regression needs to be expanded. For example, it is not clear how the dependent and independent variables have been measured/constructed. What are the results (coefficients)? I suggest the authors to introduce a table with the results and to present it into the text in a more detailed manner. Moreover, I suggest to introduce more independent variables into the regression (at least the education level and area of residence) and to discuss the obtained results.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we would like to express our appreciation for your review suggestions. We are grateful that the manuscript has been considered to have the potential to be published in the Sustainability journal.

We have assumed the changes you have signed and we have made the following asked modifications.

 

First, I strongly recommend the authors to move the part presenting the sample distribution

in the Materials and Methods section.

 

Line 248-255 we move up the “sample distribution” as you’ve suggested.

 

Second, I think that the part presenting the results of the logistic regression needs to be expanded. For example, it is not clear how the dependent and independent variables have been measured/constructed. What are the results (coefficients)? I suggest the authors to introduce a table with the results and to present it into the text in a more detailed manner. Moreover, I suggest to introduce more independent variables into the regression (at least the education level and area of residence) and to discuss the obtained results.

 

According to the reviewer’s suggestion, we expanded the logistic regression adding more independent variables, explained in a more detailed manner. We specify the dependent variable (consumption of water from aqueduct) and independent variables (negative perception, educational level, age groups, house localization, residence area). Our aim was to understand if the consumption of tap water could be influenced by the independent variables considered. Lastly the result coefficients of all threatened variables were in table (Table 4) (Lines 290-309)

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The article titled :PET-bottled water consumption in view of a Circular Economy: the case study of Salento (South Italy) is accepted in the present form . A socio - demographic study was conducted regarding  drinking water habits of citizens living in the Province of Lecce ,Italy and  the impact of massive consumption of plastic bottles water, considering the the health and environmental costs was highlighted  .

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for the time spent on the carefully review of our work. We are very grateful for your appreciation.

Best regards

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My main concern is that I don't really see why the results of a survey on type of water consumption in a specific region is of interest for an international audience. Why this survey and its results are worth to be published in an international scientific journal? Are the authors presenting any new methodology? Is this a real research? I mean, is this just the beginning of a research project? To whom are the results of the survey worth to? It is important that you work deeper all those points to make the research interesting for an international audience. You may complement the survey with more findings interesting for wider audience (ie. a review to compare with other regions; a new methodology for survey data treatment; a life cycle assessment comparing the use of PET-bottled water with glass-bottled; guidelines for policy-making to promote tap water, etc.). 

Other minor comments:

1. Abstract: the following sentence is not clear: "The consumption of tap water was negatively associated with the perception concerning its bad quality (O.R. 0.408; 95% C.I. 0.268-0.620)...". Please, re-write and avoid abreviations (O.R. and C.I.).
2. Please write "L" as the unit expressing volume (liters) all along the document.
3. Conclusions are too long

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Taking into account the revisions and the answer provided by the authors to my comments, I believe that the manuscript has been improved.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks to your valuable suggestions, the quality of the manuscript has improved significantly.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, I suggest minor revisions. Nevertheless, my main concern is still there: the real interest for an international audience of the survey-results you are presenting and the obviousness of the suggested solution (more effective communication strategies to promote the consumption of tap water instead of PET-bottled water).

Minor revision:

1) Delete the following type of data/numbers from the abstract: "(Odds Ratio 0.408; 95% Confidence Interval 0.268-0.620)". Because they are not enough clear presented here and they difficult the reading.

2) Separate the Discussion and conclusions section into two sections: 

    4. Discussion

    5. Conclusions

3) Table 4: please, indicate the meaning of O.R and 95% C.I as footnote in the same table (all tables and figures need to be readable a part from the text). Indicate also the meaning the first time they appear in the text.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we would like to express our appreciation for your precious suggestions. 

We have made all the changes you have signed:

1) We have deleted "(Odds Ratio 0.408; 95% Confidence Interval 0.268-0.620)" from the abstract;

2) We have separated discussion and conclusions in two separate sections.

3) We have inserted footnote in table 4. Moreover the meaning of O.R. and C.I had already been entered in section 2.4.

 

Best regards