The Influence of Pandemic Lockdowns on Municipal Wastewater Quality as a Consequence of Not Discharging Food Waste from Restaurants

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study addresses the Changes in the quality of municipal wastewater from food waste discharge from restaurants. It is quite an interesting study, especially since food waste is a paramount food chain concern that must be addressed and that could help mitigate the myriad economic and environmental effects of food waste. I have minor issues that I think should be addressed.

(1)  The introduction is quite long; authors should attempt to reduce it focusing on the key points. The rest could be used to support the discussion of results.

(2)  Line 44-47: As a food scientist, I feel that some credits should be given to some researchers working to reduce food waste via waste valorization efforts. While food waste is a subsisting issue, the introduction should acknowledge the efforts made by many researchers towards mitigating the effect of food waste by converting them to value-added products in addition to a source of energy being discussed. You can find some sample papers from the Journal of  Waste and Biomass Valorization (https://www.springer.com/journal/12649/ ), established to facilitate the scientific solution to waste, including those that are derived from foods.

(3)  It is important to mention how you determined the COD, BOD, suspended solids, nitrogen, and phosphorus concentration during the sampling time. Do you do the experiments or rely on government data? How many samples were taken at a time, and the number of determinations? If these are average values, it will be good to present the data as means ± SD/SE

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors demonstrated the influence of pandemic closures on wastewater quality and determined the magnitude of the environmental problem posed by the discharge of restaurant food waste into municipal sewer systems, based on data from before and during the pandemic. It seems to me a relevant study that may lead to future interventions. Here are some corrections to your article:

Line 16: "to the treatment plant, thereby reducing the carbon and nitrogen footprint of purification.

Line 85-87: You could consider describing the standard deviation with ±, instead of writing the whole word, as is usual

Line 91: It also needs to be emphasize that...

Line 103: management processes. The system remains economically attractive even despite increased costs of wastewater and sludge management

Line 154: such as fats and oils, which are present in large quantities...

Line 155-158: oils, with concentrations reaching up to 6,500 mg/L. Discharging non-pre-treated wastewater into the sewerage system can pose significant operational problems for both the pipes and wastewater treatment plants.

Line 180-181: However, a more advantageous solution, in every respect, would be to deliver the waste directly to the treatment plant, excluding the sewerage system.

Line 177-190. In my opinion this part of the possible solutions, would fit well in the discussion, besides that from my point of view, the introduction, although good, was a bit extended, so I suggest that you try to accommodate this part in discussion

 

Line 212: while it is ethical to keep the identity of the villages secret, it should say that they were towns/ villages in Poland (I guess).

220-222: You should detail how you made these determinations (measuring instruments).

The COVID-19 pandemic helped to analyze the seriousness of the waste issue, and to a large extent, your study is based on comparing the waste before during and after the pandemic, in this sense, don't you think you should restructure the title, implying that the analysis was in abysmally different periods?

I do not know if the format of the journal allows having results and discussion in the same section, if so, please omit this comment.

Be briefer in the results section. In them you put sentences that I consider to be of discussion and even repeat the objective. In the results you should write exclusively what you found, in simple paragraphs and short sentences. Put the perspectives in the discussion as well.

 

 

 

I left some corrections in the comments and suggestions section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The authors have analyzed trends in food waste generation in several European cities to depict the problems in their efficient treatment. They justify the necessity and estimate the benefits of the implementation of the approach to their processing into methane in the systems for managing food wastes at catering facilities in touristic towns. On my look, this manuscript can be published after minor revision. The following drawback should be corrected: there are many undeciphered abbreviations (BOD, COD, PE, VFA etc.).

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx