PONE-D-22-02551Assessment of household experience of solid waste management in Gelemso town, EthiopiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yifat,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Saqib Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Title does not look meaningful and attractive. It may be changed and result oriented.

Write up is very poor (view comment in attachment). Material and method section should be improved accordingly. Results do not support the title. Interpretation of results is not clear. Discussion section must be re-written before re-submission.

Conclusion section must be linked with the quantified results. General statements commonly mislead the readers.

Over all, manuscript is properly managed. English language may be improved. There are lot of language and grammar mistakes.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-22-02551R1Knowledge, attitude and practice on household solid waste management in Gelemso town, EthiopiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yifat,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. As explained previously, since the transfer in editorship this has been sent to a new reviewer, who has provided detailed comments for improvement.   I appreciate this is frustrating, but I am going to ask you to address their comments as well.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 21 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Alison Parker

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Authors have addressed all the comments accordingly in the revised manuscript. Authors have addressed all the comments accordingly in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

This is my first revision of your article in which I ask for major revisions. Here are my comments:

1. Introduction

General comment:

I found the Introduction incomplete and not well structured. You fail to introduce the knowledge gap your article is coming to fill. When you focalize on Gelemso, the paragraph is disconnected from the first part. Moreover, you point to institutions as the main source of SW, but then you focus your research on households. Also, you do not include Khat consumption questions in your survey (or at least this is not presented in the Results analysis).

You said, “Although there are limited SWM facilities in the town, most of the time the solid waste have been indiscriminately disposed along roadsides and into open areas and hence the current status of the SWM problem in the town has reached a critical stage.” But both facts may be correlated (as your results show, by the way).

And then you state: “This shows that the people's overall understanding about solid waste and SWM practices in the town are not well established.” However, this is a hypothesis and not a statement.

You should restructure the Introduction to better explain why the information you present in the article is important and what knowledge gap are you filling.

Specific comments:

Two first phrases of the 2nd paragraph should be unified.

2. Methods

Specific comments:

In section 2.1, a description of the waste management system of Gelemso is needed. What kind of facilities people have access to, to dispose waste? Waste pickers are active in Gelemso? Have the Municipality a public waste collection service? Of what kind? How many containers are available? Who pick up waste from containers and where it is waste finally disposed? All these questions are crucial to understand the answers to the survey questions.

In section 2.2, You should explain from which list you made the systematic random sampling. Do you have a list of all the households? Selected households they all accepted to participate in the study? A satellite image of the town with the identification of the selected households would be a plus.

In 2.3, the structure of the paragraph describing definitions should be reformulated because it is not understandable.

You skip from 2.4 to 2.7

3. Results (General comment: all the data should be available)

Section 3.1: information presented in this section is not used in the Discussion section. Either you use it in section 4, or you remove it from section 3.

Section 3.2: You say, “About 96% of the households gave the correct response regarding solid waste as the major pollutant of the environment”. Why can you affirm that SW is the main environmental pollution source?

Many questions are not well formulated:

Does solid waste pollute the environment? --> It depends on how it is managed

Do you know solid waste is being a wealth? --> You give the answer in the question. "Do you consider..." "Do you think" "Do you perceive..."

The amount of solid waste can be reduced by reusing at household level? --> It is an obvious question

Sorting of solid waste at home level helps for SWM? --> It depends on how the system is structured and you did not gave the reader any elements to know that.

Section 3.3: You give % of waste composition. But waste characterization studies have specific methodologies, and it seems you do not follow any of them. You should remove Figure 1 and all mentions of % of types of waste from your manuscript.

You say, “However, the majority (79.5%) of the households disposed of their solid waste illegally, either in the backyard with sacs or along the roadsides and in gully (Table 4).” But may be they expected a municipal kerbside collection. That’s why the Solid Waste Management system description is so important.

You say: “The majority (89.2%) of the households reported the absence of adequate solid waste landfills or damping sites in the city and thus had practiced an improper SWM (Table 4)”. � It seems the problem is not people are not well informed but the absence of infrastructure!

3.4 In the questions you included: “How do you get rid of solid wastes from home”. Do you considered the possibility of people giving different destinations to recycling waste and non-recycling waste?

4. Discussion

First paragraph can be part of the Introduction.

After reading the discussion, it is still not clear why improper disposal is occurring in Gelemso.

5. Conclusion

Should be modified accordingly.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Shahbaz Khan

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Knowledge, attitudes and practices on household solid waste management and associated factors in Gelemso town, Ethiopia

PONE-D-22-02551R2

Dear Dr. Yifat,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Alison Parker

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: Congratulations for your job improving the article. You addressed all the comments and now the article is much better.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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