Worldwide, for several years now many technologies and innovative processes have been developed for processing waste plastics to energy. However, most of these technologies have remained at the laboratory scale as many of them were not economical to be scaled up to commercial level plants. Some of the waste plastics processing technologies that did succeed were infact not recycling but down cycling into lower value added products which is the only method used these days for waste plastics processing. Unfortunately waste plastics that cannot be processed by down cycling are normally dumped into sanitary land fills which is extremely undesirable as those plastics remain there till eternity.

It is disturbing to note that about 5-10% of waste that is eventually disposed off into the landfills is mixed waste plastics. Infact most of the plastics produced worldwide is non-biodegradable, which is a high energy content resource that is completely wasted as it would remain in the landfill for ever .

Further, it is also utilizing a large portion of space in the landfill, say up to 10% in an era where finding space for land filling particularly in bigger cities is becoming increasingly difficult and is a issue of major concern for the municipal authorities across the globe.

In the recent past land filling as a method of disposal has become increasingly undesirable due to the stiff opposition and criticism from environmentally active groups and international organizations throughout the world. The volume of plastics being dumped at landfills is increasing exponentially, particularly in developing countries like India with affluent lifestyles in vogue now, However, in some of the developed countries due to stringent environmental regulations the quantum of waste plastics reaching the landfills has reduced only marginally. However with the development of new biodegradable plastics, the situation in the developed countries could alter dramatically. In developing countries like India awareness & education campaigns in this regards have failed miserably and needs to be conducted on a war footing on a sustained basis all over the country.