Erin Cearley's review[edit source]
- What is the most important strength of this document? "What is a Life Çycle Analysis" section. Good to put the page into context. Describing how the LCA needs boundaries for analysis, and describes associated inputs and outputs.
- What is the most important aspect to change? Hard to get a quick understanding of the comparison between paper and plastic. Perhaps tables!
- How could the navigation of the document be improved? Navigation is not bad, but if you wanted to change things, organizing your page like Figure 2 would help the reader know what to expect and how to "read" each section.
- Do you have suggestions for improving the headings used in the document? Again, tying the headings to a figure would help. But in reality, the headings seem "user friendly" enough.
- Are there any topic sentences that should be improved? Rework "qualitative comparison" topic sentence.
- Do all figures have captions, figure numbers and are they referred to in the text? Table 1 does not have a caption.
- Is there at least one reference per author? Are the references cited properly and do they use the format described here? https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Footnotes There are 5 references. And these references are cited a'la Lonny Grafman
- Are tables included as text whenever possible? (Appropedia can search text in tables – so Lonny prefers tables to be text rather than images). This page contains information on how to make tables https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Table_examples More tables could be used to sum up resource impacts. Bullet points are easier to read than just paragrap-text, but tables command ATTENTION.
- Should the document be shortened or lengthened? If so, what suggestions do you have. I am fascinated at how it appears that plastic is better in all respects except for Marine Risks. I would like to see more info on the subject.
- Any other questions or comments for the authors? What kind of bag type do you use?
Shira Wedemeyer' review[edit source]
Strengths:
- The document is well laid overall.
- Quantitative comparison is good.
Weaknesses:
- Subsections in section 3 should include description of processes.
- Issues with some headings (some are too long and "Required energy and materials to produce" is confusing).
Comments:
- Are there any topic sentences that should be improved? NO.
- Do all figures have captions, figure numbers and are they referred to in the text? YES.
- Is there at least one reference per author? YES.
- Are the references cited properly and do they use the format described here? YES.
- Are tables appropriate and have good formatting? YES.
- Should the document be shortened or lengthened? YES: Document could be lengthened in the subsections under heading #3. No explanation is given of the process or how the numbers were reached. Currently, it's just listing and comparing results.
Annie Yarberry's review[edit source]
Strengths:
- Nice format, easy to follow
- Good flow of the document
- Good conclusion!
Some things to change:
- Content of the subsection "Required Energy and Materials to Produce" does not cover materials used to produce, only water... Could emphasize the difference in composition of both paper and plastic bags.
- Under Waste, the second bullet point needs a reference.
- Quote under qualitative comparison about why neither bag decomposes in a landfill "landfills are purposely designed to prevent liquids from leaching and contaminating water supplies" is that the reason neither decomposes? Does oxygen have something to do with it?
Format
- Easy to use
- The bolded subsections emphasize the sections where comparisons are made which is nice.