A Spatial Water Footprint Assessment of Recycled Cotton T-Shirts: Case of Local Impacts in Selected China Provinces
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is potentially a good paper. The overall idea and implementation of spatial water footprint is where footprint analysis is heading. Except for s couple of errors pointed out below, the analysis appears to be accurate and the tabular and graph-on-map presentations of the results are effective.
Empirically, the paper would be improved by showing how many tee shirts we are talking about so that the results per tee shirt can be multiplied and then compared to available water resources and P sink capacity in the respective provinces.
The paper also needs major editing to bring it up to a standard of understandable English. There is a sense that the thought process is good but, with so many grammatical and word choice errors, the reader has to do a lot of guesswork in deciphering what thought is being conveyed.
Minor edits:
Reduce acronyms. It is difficult to keep so many in short-term memory and it doesn’t same much page space.
p.2-3: cotton is not always grown in arid environments and is not always irrigated.
8.5 t water per 1 tonne cotton fiber seems low given the ratio of transpiration to photosynthesis. On p.4 1 kg cotton seed requires 4.82m3 water, a ratio of 4,820:1. This seems accurate. The ratios in the tables also seem accurate.
Author Response
Response to Editor
Dear Editors,
We at the first place would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript according to the comments of the reviewers. Also, we wish to express our heartfelt thanks to you for your systematic and scientific arrangement of the peer review process. We would also like to thank the current reviewers for their time spent in reviewing our manuscript and for their constructive comments. We have addressed all the points raised by the reviewers and also consequently revised the manuscript (the highlighted parts) as per all the comments. Definitely based on their comments, we feel that the scientific quality of the manuscript has been considerably improved to be selected for publication in Sustainability. We have great pleasure in submitting our revision with the response to the reviewers’ comments for your kind perusal and consideration.
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: Empirically, the paper would be improved by showing how many tee shirts we are talking about so that the results per tee shirt can be multiplied and then compared to available water resources and P sink capacity in the respective provinces.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comments. We definitely agree with your point. The number of T-shirts indeed determines the overall water consumption and the impact of eutrophication. What we need to explain is that this manuscript is quantized based on one piece of T-shirt, in other words, the functional unit is set as “one piece of T-shirt”. Also, when quantifying, it combines relevant spatial factors such as the local water resource pressure index. Therefore the actual impact can be quantified and evaluated according to the actual production and consumption of each place.
Point 2: The paper also needs major editing to bring it up to a standard of understandable English. There is a sense that the thought process is good but, with so many grammatical and word choice errors, the reader has to do a lot of guesswork in deciphering what thought is being conveyed.
Response 2: Thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. We have improved the use of word and grammar in the revised manuscript, including the abstract and the main text, and the revision has been proofread by a native English speaker.
Point 3: Reduce acronyms. It is difficult to keep so many in short-term memory and it doesn’t same much page space.
Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. We have reduced the use of acronyms in the revised manuscript to smooth the reading process.
Point 4: p.2-3: cotton is not always grown in arid environments and is not always irrigated.
Response 4: Thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. We have restated this sentence as follows:
“While the land type of Xinjiang is the semidesert, thus it poses high pressure to the water resource of the planting region [8].”
Please see page 2, lines 57-58 in the revised manuscript.
Point 5: 8.5 t water per 1 tonne cotton fiber seems low given the ratio of transpiration to photosynthesis. On p.4 1 kg cotton seed requires 4.82m3 water, a ratio of 4,820:1. This seems accurate. The ratios in the tables also seem accurate.
Response 5: Thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. Given that the cited reference is from long ago, the data may not suitable enough. So, we have replaced it with a recent reference (in 2021) in the revised manuscript, where 1 tonne seed cotton requires 1.71E+06 kg water, i.e. 1 kg seed cotton requires 1.71m3 water, with the same order of magnitude as 4.82m3. And we have rewritten it in the revised manuscript as follows:
“A report prepared by Sphera (Sphera Solutions) revealed that water consumption per tonne of seed cotton production: conventional cotton 1.71E+06 kg; organic cotton,1.88E+06 kg, Better Cotton 1.75E+06 kg[9].”
Please see page 2, lines 58-60 in the revised manuscript.
Hope this will satisfy your query and once again we are very much indebted to you for your positive and encouraging comments on our manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
My comments are in the attachment.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion this is a very well written article, congratulations to the authors. Improvements could be made by presenting the limitations of the research in a stronger way and by explaining in more detail the conditions and possibilities of generalisability.
Author Response
Response to Editor
Dear Editors,
We at the first place would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript according to the comments of the reviewers. Also, we wish to express our heartfelt thanks to you for your systematic and scientific arrangement of the peer review process. We would also like to thank the current reviewers for their time spent in reviewing our manuscript and for their constructive comments. We have addressed all the points raised by the reviewers and also consequently revised the manuscript (the highlighted parts) as per all the comments. Definitely based on their comments, we feel that the scientific quality of the manuscript has been considerably improved to be selected for publication in Sustainability. We have great pleasure in submitting our revision with the response to the reviewers’ comments for your kind perusal and consideration.
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1: Improvements could be made by presenting the limitations of the research in a stronger way and by explaining in more detail the conditions and possibilities of generalisability.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comments and suggestion. We have rearranged the introduction in a structure of research status, limitations of existing research, research contents and novelty of this study. And the limitations of existing research can be seen in page 3, lines 125-135 in the revised manuscript.
Hope this will satisfy your query and once again we are very much indebted to you for your positive and encouraging comments on our manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
This study presented a spatial water footprint assessment of recycled cotton T-shirts in selected China provinces. It was demonstrated that spatial water footprint will be a critical component in the sustainability management improvement of the supply chain.
This research was well-written and the results are clearly presented. This paper can be published in the present form.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Upon reading this second version of the paper on "A spatial water footprint assessment of recycled cotton T-shirts：2 case of local impacts in selected China provinces," I am not convinced that the paper has been substantially improved. The original problems remain. While the spatial water footprint approach is solid, if we don't know how many tee-shirts are produced we cannot assess whether the results per tee shirt are trivial or whether recycling would alleviate pressing water scarcities in Xinjiang Province due to lower demand for irrigation water to cultivate cotton.
Secondly, the paper has not become more readable. It remains an exercise in weeding through non-intuitive acronyms and poorly chosen units of measure. The literature generally uses cubic meters (m3) for water volumes. Also, PDF (a bad acronym) is in m2yr-1. Shouldn't this be a volume of Phosphorus?
For the first few pages, here are some necessary edits by line, though there are many more throughout the paper.
19-22: highlighted results sentence has undecipherable units
23: manufacturing has been intervening in the hydrosphere
34-35: Through international trade, cotton textiles intervene massively in the global water cycle.
37: twenty-five nations
57-58: Because Xinjiang is a semidesert, cotton production creates pressure on local water resources.
64: abundant not numerous
142-3: nonsense sentence.
245: underground water is redundant
Calculating a spatial water footprint for a product and showing for this can be reduced through recycling is a worthwhile analysis and seems to be accurate. Yet the paper as presented is not ready for publication.
Reviewer 2 Report
I accept it in its present form.
