Application of the Operational Research Method to Determine the Optimum Transport Collection Cycle of Municipal Waste in a Predesignated Urban Area
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is very interesting, as it concerns the major problem of waste production and waste management. Finding the method of the optimum collection cycle of municipal waste is the solution in which many subjects will be interested in. However, in my opinion in the current version of the manuscript there are some flaws that must be corrected. Also, the quality English used causes that the text is difficult to understand. The major comments to the manuscript are listed below:
Keywords: I would suggest to reduce the number of keywords.
Introduction: What is predesignated area? In the introduction section there is no description where the research were performed. Also there is no information why this area was chosen for the investigations.
Introduction: lack of the clear aim of the study, investigating method, methods of comparison of the results achieved (that is how I understood the aims from the general reading).
Page 3: Municipal Waste Transportation section: number 3 instead of 2.
Page 3, line 101: “This method is dealt with [37-49] …” the description what is NNSM method in general and while it is the first time to use it in the waste management what are the premises/reasons to do so, please give references why it is resonable.
Page 3, line 103: “…number of other methods…” what other methods please name (not only BFAA and T-PH).
Page 3, line 103: why particularly these two methods where chosen for further analysis (comparison)
Page 3, line 109: solid municipal wastes… What about liquid municipal wastes?
Page 3, line 128: “In foreign countries, transportation by ship or rail is only used where longer distances need to be covered” please give reference.
Page 3, line 129: “Where short distances are involved, it is possible use air or water piping systems” please give reference. Please define longer, shorter distances
Page 4, line 154 Decree No3/2001 Coll. where in references?
Page 5, line 193: just “In Table 1 …”
Page 7, line 247: POH CR where in references?
Discussion section is more like description of methods used. Lack of discussion what were the results of three models used and how the results contributed on the possibilities of reducing waste bins.
Lack of conclusions from Authors’ own research. Page 11, lines 350-354 seems more like introduction; liens 355-359 and 360-366 are aims of the study which incidentally are missing in the introduction.
References: Journal names all words with capital letters.
Page 14, line 468: what is number 18 at the beginning of the reference?
Page 14, line 471: what is number 19 at the beginning of the reference?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper entitled “Application of the Operational Research Method to Determine the Optimum Collection Cycle of Municipal Waste in a Predesignated Area” describes an optimization procedure aimed to the decrease the number mixed waste bins, due to waste separation, and to the determination of the best collection cycle in a real urban road network. The paper is well written and the results, also the one regarding the characterization of the wastes, are interesting. However, the following changes have to be carried out before the acceptance of the paper:
1) In the abstract, what is reported in lines 10-13 (The aim is to…road network) has been repeated in lines 24-27. If the highlighted sentence (The aim is to…road network) is removed, unnecessary redundancy is avoided without altering the meaning of the abstract
2) Please, reduce the introduction and merge it with the second chapter (“Literature Review”). All the sentences of the introduction the Authors want to leave in the manuscript, ha to be supported by literature findings.
3) Lines 101-102: “As far as we are aware, this is the first time this method has been applied to the waste management issue, which makes this article unique.” I disagree with this sentence. As example, in the paper entitled “Solving an urban waste collection problem using ants heuristics”, the Authors also describe the adoption of the nearest neighbor methodology for the optimal waste collection. Additionally, they also ameliorated it!
4) There are two chapter two
5) The second 2nd chapter (Municipal Waste Transportation) may be deleted and the most important concepts could be condensate is a short paragraph (5-7 lines) added in the introduction section. More in-depth considerations regarding the Municipal Waste Transportation can be found in bibliographic references added by the Authors. To this purpose I suggest you to add this reference: Tchobanoglous, G., Theisen, H., Vigil, S.A., Alaniz, V.M. “Integrated solid waste management: engineering principles and management issues” New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.
6) How were obtained the results of tables 1, 2, 3 and 4?
7) Please correct the citations 35 and 36.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is well written, the Methods are appropriate and Discussions are scientifically sound. The Concluding Remarks provide good presentation of the critical outcome of this manuscript and References are up to date and relevant. It is a quality contribution with wide significance to waste management, which surely deserves publication in Sustainability. However, there are some minor points in the manuscript where additional clarifications would be useful.
In the introduction section the authors need to point out how this study is different from the other limited literature (in brief). This difference will provide the motive for the study. In any case, references should be definitely provided in this section.
There seems a risk in circular reasoning when authors do believe that L. 257-259 " These calculations show that in towns and cities with well-developed waste separation collection systems that the capacity of mixed waste bins would only need to 2/3 of that required if no waste separation took place”. This assumption should be properly explained in detail since the proposed scenario of 50% separation of the specified components seems not feasible in practice for the area under study (not well-developed waste separation system indeed).
It would be helpful to further explain briefly the exact difference of the methods of NNS and HS on the basis of waste manament efficiency. What kind of discrepancy in the results can be obtained from their application? The answers for these questions may be well known for the Environmental society but not for the general audience.
Some additional technical corrections……..
1. P.13, L. 354. Please Rephrase L. 76 to make sense
2. Please use SI unit system e.g (L, 213, Table 6, , L.241 etc) please use L instead of l.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
No further remarks for the Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
all the changes I suggested have been carried out
