In, Out or Beyond? Waste Pickers and Policy Networks: A Story from Jardim Gramacho (Rio de Janeiro)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study is significant and addresses a less recognized issue in sustainable development which is the social aspect. Overall, I find the paper has notable contributions with minimal concerns. My comments are as follows.
1. Please check Table 2. The table was cropped in the manuscript
2. Section 4.1 and 4.2 may be better presented in Section 2 so that Section 4 can directly jump to the findings which start in Section 4.3
Author Response
Dear Review#1, Please find attached my letter and thank you for your work.
With kind regards,
Antonella Maiello
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear author,
Your manuscript is potentially valuable, mainly the reasons that led to this research and the interpretation of the results.
However, it is actually very weak. It lacks any scientific soundness.
Consequently, I suggest you strongly improve your manuscript and then send it again to this scientific journal. It currently looks like a report in many parts.
Here below, you can find my specific comments.
Abstract.
Your abstract has more than 300 words. However, in the “instructions for authors” you can read “The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum.” As a consequence, you need to shorten it.
References.
In the “instructions for authors” you can read “References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text.” As a consequence, you used the wrong format. Please, correct it along the manuscript.
In addition, you should provide more recent references in the manuscript.
Lines 35-36: “Waste production has doubled over the last ten years and the coming years will experience an upward trend (McAllister Jessica, 2015).”
Your reference is too old for the given sentence. You should find an appropriate citation published in 2022 or 2021. In addition, a citation coming from the scientific literature would be preferable.
Line 37: “The most up-to-date statistics...”.
The reference associated with this sentence is dated “2018”. As a consequence, I suggest you reformulate the sentence because “the most up-to-date statistics” appears to be ambiguous.
Lines 38-40: “Within the capitalist system, the more a country is economically wealthy the more it generates waste (World Bank, 2018).”
Your statement is interesting. However, I am not sure it is correct. Do you mean that, for example, in a Communist society (e.g. Cuba or North Korea) the correlation you mentioned is different? You need to demonstrate your sentence. Indeed, in the publication that you mentioned, the terms “capitalist” or “capitalism” were never used.
Lines 40-43. The sentences are interesting. However, you need to provide adequate (scientific) references.
Lines 44-46: “It is global because waste production generates CO2 emissions and contributes to climate change and because waste is increasingly exported to lower-income countries.”
You need to provide adequate (scientific) references.
Lines 58-60: “Locally tailored, even rudimentary, solutions have proven more effective and less impactful than highly technologically sophisticated ones...”
I suggest reformulating the sentence as follow: “Locally tailored, even rudimentary, solutions CAN BE more effective…”
Line 110: “…where recycling is still more costly than making new goods from scratch.”
Please, provide a reference or delete the sentence.
Line 113: “Medina, 2008”.
A more recent reference is needed.
Lines 113-115: “In the academic literature, the topic has received increased attention over the last 20 years, moving from hundreds to thousands of yearly publications.”
Please, provide a recent and scientific reference or delete the sentence.
Line 145: “disincentivizes sorted collection.”
Please, provide at least a reference.
Lines 145-147: “While incineration has still many supporters, these recent studies are providing evidence of the cost-opportunity of landfills, when we consider emissions in the cost-benefit analysis.”
Your sentence is weak and seems to contradict a large body of scientific literature. Indeed, look at the waste management hierarchy. You can find waste disposal in landfills (and dumpsites) as the worst practices, more unsustainable and impactful than waste incineration with energy recovery. In addition, when waste disposal involves the organic fraction of solid waste, the GHG emissions can be more dangerous because methane is produced (in anaerobic conditions, which are typical in landfills and dumpsites). Thus, your considerations currently lack adequate scientific support and soundness. Your statement about landfills and incineration can be found in many parts of your manuscript. Thus, you should provide a stronger and more objective analysis of it. Indeed, to demonstrate your assertions in a scientific journal, you need to provide adequate elements.
Lines 164, 165-166: “I decided”.
The third person or the passive form is advisable.
Line 176: “Burawoy (ibid.)”.
You need to provide a reference in a scientific journal, not “ibid”.
Lines 185-186: “Caxias hosted in the neighbourhood of Jardim Gramacho (see Figure 1)”.
You put Figure 1 in another section of your manuscript. Furthermore, the figure seems to refer to something else.
Lines 176-192 from Section 2.1 (Methods and Materials).
It appears too generic. You should give more scientific soundness to this part.
Lines 193-194: “from 2016 until 2022”.
You should also specify the months.
Line 195: “I focus”.
In this and other parts of the manuscript, I suggest you to use the third person or the passive form.
Lines 198-199: “The fourth row of Table 1 shows the interviewee categories.”
Please, recheck the grammar. In addition, it is crucial that you also provide the structure of the interviews you carried out (e.g., the specific questions that were posed). Taking into account that such materials would be very long, you can provide them as Supplementary Materials.
Section 3. Policy-network theory.
It is unclear and misleading the presence of this section (for example, lines 257-261 seem to be taken from another specific context or text). Furthermore, putting it after the Materials and Methods section is a bit unconventional.
Section 4.1 The extended case study context.
The section has a too narrative and no scientific structure.
Line 354: Figure 1. Timeline of the National Framework for Waste Management.
It seems it was not mentioned in the main text.
Section 4.2.1. The Brazilian framework for waste management.
It looks like it should not be a sub-section of the Results (“Findings”).
Section 4.2.2. Duque de Caxias’s waste governance and Jardim Gramacho.
It looks like a report. It has not scientific soundness.
Map.1 Duque de Caxias and Jardim Gramacho localization map.
You should call it “Figure…”.
In addition, it has very low quality. Not even a yardstick is available.
Additional comments about the Results.
The results often appear too generic. For example, you can read (lines 494-495): “Many interviewees confirmed that councils represent the space…”. Although the author highlighted the importance of quality analysis, she cannot forget the importance of quantitative data in some instances.
Additionally, many considerations seem “personal” and not supported by scientific results. It is a weakness that the author should consider in order to give more strength to her results in a scientific journal.
Furthermore, more details about the dumpsite mentioned many times in the introduction would be necessary.
More information about the interviews is necessary (when you carried out them; characteristics of the stakeholders that you interviewed; etc).
Section 4.4. Thematic analysis of interview data.
It appears as a report, with little scientific soundness.
Section 4.4.3. Political and institutional stewardship: in, out or beyond the policy community.
Some interviews are reported in a very unscientific way.
Section 5. Final remarks and research agenda.
The final section is too generic.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer#2,
Thank you for your time and commitment to revising my paper.
Please, find my responses in the attached file.
Kind regards,
Antonella Maiello
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments to the Author:
1. The limit between the methodology and results is not clear.
2. It does not use the term “results” so it is difficult to distinguish where it start.
3. Citations do not meet the guidelines.
4. The format of the tables does not comply with the guidelines.
5. The title of the figures should be placed below the figure, not above.
6. Figure 3 has letters outside the boxes and looks messed up.
7. The font is very small, you can hardly see it.
8. It is not recommended to use references from the 90s and more than 6 are being used. 1988, 1991, 1997, 1995, 1983 etc. It is recommended to use more recent literature.
9. You do not present conclusions of your investigation. It is necessary the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article.
10. Also, please pay special attention to formatting of references in the Instructions to Authors.
Author Response
Dear Reviewr#3,
Thank you for your time and commitment to revising my paper.
Please, find my responses in the attached document.
With kind regards,
A.M.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
First of all, dear author, I want to thank you for this interesting study, which highlights the inequalities for the people of the "South" as opposed to the northern countries, which cause a heavy burden on the environment and human health. Upper middle-income and high-income countries collect nearly all the waste they generate, with high-income countries recycling and composting more than one-third of all waste. In low-income countries, about 48 percent of waste is collected in urban areas and only 26 percent in rural areas, and only 3 percent is recycled. Globally, 14.2% of waste is recycled and 4.9% is composted.
The main idea of the article is waste pickers: from outsiders to a “green profession”. Below I will outline a few thoughts that I think might strengthen your research:
1. It would be a good idea to indicate in the article that the main tool for promoting waste collectors to the official sector is becoming a form of public-private partnership. In Brazil, for example, the law “Integral Management of Solid Urban Waste” was implemented, according to which waste collectors became part of the official system of solid waste management and received union support.
2. The status of a waste collector depends directly on the extent to which the state allows it to participate in waste collection and create autonomous markets for raw materials. But in different periods the need of the state and municipalities for collectors has varied. Today, the institution of environmental control plays the most important role in promoting the status of collectors; - the more secondary raw materials are valued in the ecological culture, the more steps are created in the hierarchy of waste collectors with a free degree of activity and, accordingly, the more opportunities they must return secondary resources to the material flow.
3. The complexity of the production and recycling system creates health and safety requirements, directly affecting the status and ability to survive in the professional environment. Therefore, the demand for "green professionsË® will increase, while self-employed waste pickers will further face legal restrictions on their activities. In addition, for the first time in our time, sustainable professional and craft communities engaged in waste collection and recycling are emerging. Their activities are governed by an ethical-ecological complex of sustainable development with the possibility of growth.
In conclusion, I would like to add that the study is undoubtedly of scientific interest, and if finalized, can be published in this journal.
I note that in the list of literature we should add a couple of studies concerning modern practices of waste management, such as industrial symbioses and eco-technoparks. And then move from the general to the specific.
Hani A. Abu-Qdais; Anna I. Kurbatova. The Role of Eco-Industrial Parks in Promoting Circular Economy in Russia: A Life Cycle Approach. Sustainability 2022, 14, 3893.
Wang, S.; Lu, C.; Gao, Y.; Wang, K.; Zhang, R. Life cycle assessment of reduction of environmental impacts via industrial symbiosis in an energy-intensive industrial park in China. J. Clean. Prod. 2019, 241, 118358. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Author Response
Dear Reviewer#$,
Thank you for your time and commitment to revising my manuscript.
Please, find my response in the attached file.
With kind regards,
Antonella Maiello
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear author,
You significantly improved the quality of your manuscript. Thus, I only suggest some minor revisions as follows.
Lines 37-39: “It is global because waste production generates CO2 emissions and contributes to climate change and because waste is increasingly exported to lower-income countries.”
As I wrote in my previous peer-review, you need to provide adequate (scientific) references. I think you missed this comment.
Point 8 (in your answers).
Considering the answer you gave me, feel free to cite both publications simultaneously (i.e. Medina, 2008; Morais et al., 2022).
Lines 104-105: “In the academic literature, the topic has received increased attention over the last 20 years, moving from hundreds to thousands of yearly publications [15].”
The reference you added does not demonstrate/confirm your sentence. I mean, your sentence remains incorrect. You wrote that “over the last 20 years”, the academic literature on this topic increased “from hundreds to thousands of yearly publications”. However, from Table 1 and Figure 1 from the manuscript you cited, you can see that the authors inspected less than 300 publications over the last 30 YEARS. Consequently, I would suggest you delete the last part of your sentence (i.e. “moving from hundreds to thousands of yearly publications”).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer #2,
Thanks again for your relevant observations.
All points raised were addressed within the text in this last version of the paper.
I really appreciated your commitment and time in reading my manuscript and contributing specific and helpful comments.
With kind regards,
Antonella Maillo
Reviewer 3 Report
Ok. Thank you.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer #3,
I read again my paper and revised it in all its main sections.
I think it is now a better manuscript, thanks also to the relevant points raised by 4 reviewers and I hope you can also agree with that.
Thank you for your time and commitment.
With kind regards,
Antonella Maiello
