Redesigning the Municipal Solid Waste Supply Chain Considering the Classified Collection and Disposal: A Case Study of Incinerable Waste in Beijing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is very interesting but needs to be reorganized in content. 

Major revision

1. Paragraph 4.1 (page 10 and 11), Paragraph 4.2 (page 12) and Paragraph 4.3 (from line 373 to line 402)  seem to be "materials and methods" and not "results". I suggest moving these paragraphs to the appropriate section
2. In paragraph 4.3 (from line 380 to line 402), there are numerous references to weight setting. Did the authors set these parameters based on their own choices? Are there other publications that justify these choices? 
3. In "Results" Section, there is a lack of references to the real impacts of the "redesigned sorting waste collection -trasportation - disposal supply chain" in CO2 emission or Ecological Footprint. I suggest adding some sentences about it to make the paper even more interesting. 

Minor Revision

1. line 23 - delete "And"
2. line 81 - delete "And"
3. line 110-112 - delete "And" at the beginning of the sentence. It is necessary to rearrange the sentence
4. line 164 - delete "And"
5. line 195 - delete ";"
6. line 308 - delete "And"
7. line 417 - delete ";"

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper studied the impact of redesigning the supply chain of MSW collection and disposal. A case study regarding the incineration waste in Xuanwu District in Beijing was conducted. The MSW supply chain was redesigned through changing the current waste collection method and optimizing the truck traveling distance. The developed approach based on the actual data can help reduce cross contamination during the waste transportation and help with waste classification, and it was also claimed that such approach can help with sustainable development in the future. The overall manuscript is acceptable, however, to make this paper achieve higher scientific level, the language of the manuscript needs to be revised and some additional data should be provided.

1. The texts in Figure 1, 2, 3 and 4 are not very clear, please re-upload them with higher resolution.
2. It seems that Figure 6 does not add too much value to the study, please consider combining it with Figure 5 or remove it.
3. The kitchen waste consists of 50% of MSW, can you briefly address if the changes made would affect the disposal of those kitchen waste?
4. Line 382: “The mileage of vehicles represents economic impacts, and the storage time of waste and the transported times of waste in collection stations represents environmental impacts”. The mileage of vehicles should also be responsible for environmental impacts. In addition, the term environmental impacts are not well defined. Is it only talking about GHG emissions? It would be better if you can consider the CO, NO_x and other pollutants.
5. Line 453-455: “However, in long-term operational effects, it is conducive to improve the effectiveness of waste disposal, and play a positive role in the sustainable development of cities.” This statement requires more data to prove, more discussion on the environmental impact is needed. Since there are no new facilities required to be constructed and the transportation distances of the trucks can be obtained, it would be beneficial if the authors can compare the GHG emissions and the costs between the proposed approach and the existing one.
6. Regarding some of the language issues:
   1. Line 12-13: “At present, the supply chain of municipal solid waste (MSW) in China is in the state that classified collection, mixed transportation, and classified disposal.” This sentence needs to be revised.
   2. Line 16: “redesigned” instead of “redesign”.
   3. Line 101: “improving” instead of “improvising”.
   4. Line 155: Remove “been”.
   5. Line 332: 13:30 PM instead of AM?
   6. Line 344: “were” instead of “be”.
   7. Line 359: “sort” instead of “sorting”.
   8. Line 418-421: Please revise this sentence.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is interesting and useful case study to improve the waste management system in China. For easier understanding, this paper should be make minor revision.

I think the key point in this paper is how the redesigning process affect to improvement of MSW supply chain. Addition of another figure showing the results of redesigning from figure 4 will be easy to understand the novelty results of this paper.

 

Specific comments are as follows.

 

Figure 1 to 4: Since it is unclear, I recommend they should be replaced to clearer one.

 

Line 40: I think it need more explanation of the difference of the cost of processing and the social cost. Is it containing collection cost and transportation cost, or is it only treatment cost?

 

Line 158: "Materials and Methods" might be unsuitable because this paper implement not scientific experiments but numerical experiments.

 

Line 196 and 309: I think "scavengers" is uncommon recently. How is "waste pickers”?

 

Line 332: No need PM and AM.

 

Line 369: The map data of specific results such as Figure 4 will help to understand of the function allocation results. Simply put, visualization of Table 2 will be easy to understand.

 

Line 385-388: Retype w2 and w3.

 

Line 404-405: Need to describe a process for obtaining the optimal target value and average target value. Which equations in this paper are used for?

 

Line 469: More detail discussion might be important in the point of view not only the seasonal changes in waste production and composition but also the comparison of residential area and commercial area. This is just comment for the future work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

the manuscript has been definitely improved. I suggest it for publication

Author Response

Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.  And best wishes to you.

Reviewer 2 Report

I'm inclined to agree that most of the concerns were well-addressed, and the current version of manuscript meet the standard. However, more editing is still required for some minor language issues.

The following are some examples:

Line 465: Change "whether" to "either".

Line 490: "full play" to "maximize".

Lime 502: "transport" to "be transported".

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf