The BBC has  story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9385244.stm) that focuses on the clay tea disposable tea cups used to serve tea (chai) for 1 rupee in India.  Once a customer drinks tea, the cup is thrown on the ground. With rain and sun, the cup dissipates back to the earth as a sustainable solution. These cups are baked lightly and made in the thousands in workshops in an open shed and dried in the sun, at a rate of eight seconds per cup.  But India’s new customers want plastic cups – non disposable, thus upsetting a supply chain that was sustainable both to the earth and in its ability to enable low cost supply by entrepreneurs.  Should such sustainable solutions be promoted as more suitable for developing economies demanding job creation ? Or will the clay cup disappear just as many technological shifts in the global supply chain ?