مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Recent research on the so-called ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BoP)d the bottom tier of the world income pyramid and thus those people living in extreme and moderate povertydclaims to see the poor not only as consumers but also as active parts of the value chain, thus potentially advancing social sustainability through development. A holistic understanding of ‘BoP 2.0’ (Simanis, Hart, & Duke, 2008), or ‘integrated BoP’ (Hahn, 2009), attempts to integrate the population at the BoP in earlier phases of the supply chain to address issues of economic well-being and social improvements for the poor population. However, apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Gold, Hahn, & Seuring, 2013; Hart, 2011; Kandachar & Halme, 2008), the perspective of the ecological environment has been neglected in most BoP articles until now (Kolk, Rivera-Santos, & Rufin, 2014). Similarly, supply chain issues at the BoP are also rather absent from academic discussions (for recent exceptions, see, e.g. Gold et al., 2013; Hall & Matos, 2010; Sodhi & Tang, 2011).

The present paper aims at filling these voids by, first, exploring the reverse logistics (RL) value chain of portable drinking water distributed in so-called ‘water sachets’ (i.e. bagged water sold in small quantities of usually up to 500 ml to provide safe and affordable instant drinking water to the public) before, second, critically scrutinising the various sustainability-related outcomes of such a BoP project. To achieve this, we take a holistic and multidisciplinary view on the sustainability issues of a typical BoP supply chain; illuminate the ways of actively including the BoP population in the value chain and combine this with ecological aspects by considering RL as informal valorisation activities in detail. Most cases that aim to include the BoP usually focus on production or distribution aspects. The inclusion in this case, however, is in the reduction process of the product following the use phase. The concept of informal valorisation (IV), stemming from waste management research (Gunsilius, Chaturvedi, & Scheinberg, 2011; Scheinberg, 2011) emphasises the role of informal waste pickers who extract value from the end-of-life product. Against this background, we aim to explore the inherent complexity of sustainability by providing an in-depth examination of RL as part of the supply chain of a typical BoP product.

In early BoP research, the focus was often multinational enterprises (Kolk et al., 2014). In the present case, however, local industry associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and politicians foster the BoP activities (see also Hahn & Gold, 2014), which helps to reduce the ecological impacts of the respective product by enabling reverse material flows through valorisation incentives for the BoP segment. However, while at first glance the valorisation opportunity involves considering the social dimension due to the inclusion of the BoP population, a thorough scrutinisation shows that successful poverty alleviation via this opportunity is not possible for systemic reasons that will be discussed throughout the paper. The case study offers a holistic and critical perspective of sustainability issues in BoP supply chains. We start by exploring the question of how the RL chain of water sachets is organised and then proceed by more specifically illuminating the question of potential sustainability trade-offs of IV at the BoP.