Composition of New York State (United States) Disposed Waste and Recyclables in 2021: An Advanced Analysis of Waste Sort Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper "Composition of New York state disposed waste and recyclables in 2021: an advanced analysis of waste sort data" provides a statistical analysis of waste generated in New York with its breakdown per location and type of material. The work performed is useful and can be published, but the presentation needs significant improvement. 

-The manuscript needs to be better organized. Materials and methods should be in section 2, before the results. 

-Please add webpages as references. For example correct line 135 in page 3.

-The separation between lines must be homogeneous through the whole manuscript. The format looks different between page 3 and page 4.

-The analysis of the results is hard to understand. The authors present the heat maps in Figures 1 and 2, and they describe the euclidean distance, but it is not clear the physical representation of it. In my opinion, this is a critical point to review in the whole manuscript. The authors use so many lines to describe the figures but only say what can be observed in the Figure, not the implications behind them. 

- For example, in Figure 1. What does the blue rectangle mean?

-Also in line 172 of page 5, authors mention that single-stream recyclables are closer to the total waste stream and MSW data. Where that can be seen in Figure 1. What are the implications of them to be closer? The representation of Figure 1 is not connected with the comments. 

-Same in line 177, "2018 EPA MSW tend to be farther". Does it mean that EPA is significantly different to the one measured?

-When referring to the change of scale in the heat map for Figure 2, please just add the scale employed. 

- A figure 3 is referred as heatmap and it is missed. 

-In page 8, there is no description of the implication of the p-values. Does it mean that none of them is correlated?

-In Page 10, when describing the PCA, the authors describe that it is near or far, but not what close or near represents. 

-It is hard to understand what the authors want to highlight with the second PCA. Are they evaluating how similar is their data to the one reported by the EPA?

-Page 14, line 409 to 415, it is not clear what the authors what to highlight from the figure. 

-page 17, line 501 to 503. It is hard to understand. Please, rewrite. 

-Page 18, line 549. What #1/#2 mean? 

- I would also move the Annexed tables as Supplementary Information. 

Author Response

Please see attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall comments:

The manuscript by Tonjes et al. discusses the waste composition of New York State by analyzing the results of a state-funded study that occurred in 2021 in some locations across the state. An analysis using multivariate and standard statistics was conducted and data was compared with studies done in different states of the United States. My recommendation is for a major review because the methodology section was not very well explained, and it was presented after the results and discussion. The manuscript also needs to be revised as there are several issues with the English language and sometimes it is very informal, appearing more like a report than a scientific paper. Figures and Tables also need to be revised for consistency and formatting. I suggest combining the results and discussion sections as one section and using subsections to divide each topic, in order to improve the readability of the text. Please see below for more detailed comments and suggestions.

0) Title, Author Information, and Abstract

 List of authors: I would suggest that the authors review the list of authors and combine all authors with the same affiliation with the same number and include their initials to identify their e-mails. Example: 

¹ Waste Data and Analysis Center, Department of Technology and Society, Stony Brook University; [email protected] (D. J. T.), [email protected] (S. M.), ….

Abstract: 

Line 43: I would suggest using the “The state of New York, in the United States, …” instead of “New York State”. The reference to the country needs to be made as the journal's audience is global. 

Line 46: It seems that the subject “The resulting data…” is singular, so should it read “The resulting data was analyzed…”?

Line 48: Are the “containers” made of plastic or glass or both? Define their composition.

Line 51: Need to define the acronym “US”. 

Lines 51-52: “Recyclables were different from discards” – this sentence is loose. I would suggest rephrasing to connect with the text. 

Lines 54-55: Why “Extended Producer Responsibility” is capitalized?

1) Introduction

Lines 78-79: It seems that the subject “… waste composition data…” is singular, so should it read “… waste composition data is not accurate as well.”?

Lines 109-110: Please include the report reference as a citation and link (and access date) in the reference list.

Line 116: Maybe change to “…state of New York…”

Lines 122-123: Was spring data collected in the year of 2021?

Line 132: The font size seems to be smaller in this line. 

- Please add to the introduction some of the technical terms discussed in the manuscript, such as the differences between single-stream and dual-stream, for example. 

2) Results 

Lines 134-135: I suggest including a citation to the webpage with the raw data and having the link in the list of references and not in the main text. 

Section 2.1.1.: This section has a different line spacing than previous sections. Please keep the text format consistent throughout the manuscript. 

Line 171: I would suggest naming the “2021 California data (CA)” differently to be consistent with the other naming where the town, county, etc. is used. Why not “data from the state of California [ref]”?

 

Line 175: Please define NYSDEC here and not in Lines 193-194.

Line 179: Similar to the California data, why not use “City of New York” since “Town of Southhold” is being used?

Line 186: Please define UCRRA. 

Line 190: Please check the singular/plural of the sentence. “The dual stream paper is farther away…”

Line 214: “2020 California squares” – Isn’t the study from 2021?

Line 230: Figure 3 refers to the PCA analysis. Please check the correct figure number. 

Line 269: “were calculated…”- singular/plural 

Tables 1, 2, and 3: Please format/align tables to fit the text appropriately. Avoid the use of vertical lines in tables, as they could potentially make reading along the rows more difficult. Please add a line space between the text and the table. 

Figures 3 and 4: Please use the same font type for the axis labels and labels within the graph. 

Line 357: Should it be Table 4 instead of Table 6?

Line 358: Need to define what are the #1 and #2 plastics. (PET and HDPE).

Table 4: What does “wted factors” mean?

Figures 6 and 7: A top line has been cut from these figures.

Line 451: Why the #1 and #2 plastic containers are being considered non-recyclable materials?

Line 483: Please define MGP.

3) Discussion

Lines 736-743: I would think that most of the fines are organic. I was not able to understand the reason why it could not be added to the other organics category. Alternatively, the authors could have collected a few samples of the fines and done a quick test by burning it in a muffle furnace to assess the inorganic content and proportionally split the fines into the other organics and inorganics categories. 

Lines 772-775: I do not understand why consider all #3-7 plastics as non-recyclable containers. Plastic #5 (Polypropylene, PP) has been sorted from the #3-7 plastics as they are usually the highest amount in this stream (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2023.09.002 in this study the authors found up to 78% PP in #3-7 plastic bales in the Midwest) and there is a growing demand for this feedstock by plastic recyclers. 

4) Materials & Methods

- This section needs to be presented before the results section so the reader can understand how the data presented in the results section was collected/analyzed.

- Please include information of the software utilized for the data analysis. 

Section 4.1.: Why cities/towns/counties in the western and northern regions of the state were not included in the study? 

Line 819: By participants, do the authors mean MRFs and waste transfer stations? I think it would be interesting to expand here some examples of participants.

Lines 827-828: Please rewrite the sentence, it is not clear. “Most days”? 100-200 kg would be 220-441 lbs?

Lines 832-834: Why was the data not reported? Please provide an explanation. 

 

Table 9: It seems to be a table with results, so why not include it in the results section? It would also be interesting to present the results in weight percent. 

Lines 839-842: Please rewrite this paragraph. It is unclear the information presented here. The detailed site-specific result reports have been or are still being finalized? It is one option or the other. Please include the citation to the webpage and do not include the link in the main text. 

Lines 872-874: Please rewrite this sentence for clarity. 

5) Conclusion

Line 888: I find it quite unconventional for the authors to refer to themselves in the third person here. It would be sufficient to say that a program to collect information about solid waste composition was established to meet the state's needs. 

Lines 939-940: I do not see the need for this sentence here.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The text needs to be revised as language needs to be more "scientific" and there were several instances of subject-verb inconsistencies, not to mention the lack of commas. 

Author Response

Please see attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript can be accepted for publication. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The new manuscript version has been extensively revised and the authors have addressed all my comments and suggestions with very detailed responses. Congratulations on the good work and good luck with your new studies.