Presently, plastics are among materials showcasing the fastest growth rate in domestic and industrial usage due to their versatile range of applications garnered from their flexibility and relatively cheaper rate. Due to their short shelf-life, increasing difficulty in disposal, legislative constraints and escalating costs, loads of plastics waste stream have found their way to the environment, thereby causing serious health and environmental challenges. These have necessitated increasing need for alternative disposal routes. Recent progress in the development of green biodegradable polymers has not been able to fill the vast demand for plastics, thereby still prompting utilization of petroleum-based polymers in various applications. However, plastics recycling has continued to evolve through use of a wide variety of recent and established technologies including energy value recovery via waste-to-energy incineration, use of processed fuel, source minimization and reuse. Nevertheless, aforementioned alternatives have demonstrated potentials to conserve natural resources, while also minimizing wastes. On the other hand, production of liquified fuel has shown potential as better alternative because the plastics calorific value is about 40 MJ kg⁻¹, and proximately close to the calorific number of fuels. Numerous researches across the globe have taken place on chemically recycling plastics solid wastes to the monomer, in addition to fuel. Hence, the present paper elucidates recently emerging trends in wastes plastics thermolysis to liquid fuel.

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