Towards Sustainability: Mapping Interrelationships among Barriers to Circular Bio-Economy in the Indian Leather Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please kindly consider the comments in the attached pdf file. You may open the pdf file using Microsoft Edge. Thank you.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 1 comment is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I think this is a good job. The topic and research work are very interesting. I just have some minor comments. On the section of introduction, the academic contribution of this paper to the research topic should be elaborated more clearly. I suggest the authors to add more texts to showcase the academic contribution of this paper.

Author Response

Reviewer 2 comment is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is entitled 'Towards Sustainability: Mapping interrelationships among  barriers to circular bio-economy in the Indian leather industry', thus holding potential to make an important contribution that can advance our understanding of the barriers facing the leather processing industry in the study area. 

Very important results have been generated and a lot of implications of the results have been summarized. 

What I did not find though  in the manuscript is how the results compare with findings of earlier research. This denies the reader to understand both similarities and dissimilarities, thus not able to point out what is the significance of the research conducted. Therefore, I recommend a properly written section that specifically provides the discussion of the results. 

Furthermore,  I find the conclusion section to be relatively well written in that there is an integration between the research purpose and the results generated as well as discussing some of their implications. 

In reading the entire manuscript, I came across some instances where the language used is not up to standard. A few problem areas are provided as examples. 

Line 51-52: By following CBE practices, global nations can seek to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) [5].

Comment: The words 'global nations' are imprecise and confusing. Can you please correct them for improved clarity. 

Line 68-69: Also, it has been found that countries like China, India, and African countries are among the countries that generate tonnages of waste, and need better treatment solutions.

Comment: It is stated that the mentioned countries generate tonnages of wastes. This is not making sense because I am sure that every country produce certain tonnages of waste. Instead, the authors can stress the specific amount of the tonnages involved and in that way we can begin to appreciate the spatial differences between developed and developing countries.    

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3 comment is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

In general, the subject treated in the article "Towards Sustainability: Mapping interrelationships among barriers to circular bio-economy in the Indian leather industry" by K. Karuppiah, et al. is very interesting. The article shows novel results in the field of Bio-economy. However, the article needs minor changes to be published in Sustainability.

 

The following is a list of observations:

1. Keywords: it is convenient to write the full name for DEMATEL, and to ensure wider dissemination of the paper.

2. The information in lines 77-97 can be shown in a pie chart figure.  

3. Lines 130-136 can be shown in a blocks diagram.

4. Improve the blocks diagram in figure 1, for example “Stage-I” should be placed in the first block, and “Stage-II” in the second one. Moreover, the bottom block is not visible.

5. In table 2, the word “Leather Company” appears in each column, write only one for all numbers (1 to 5).

6. Section 6.1 can be shown in a diagram with three blocks.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 4 is attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

After reading the revised manuscript, i found that most of my comments and concerns have been addressed satisfactorily.