Plastic waste generation in India was around 9.4 million tonnes.year⁻¹ in 2019 as compared to the global generation rate of more than 380 million tonnes.year⁻¹ in 2019. Thus, India’s contribution was around 3.1% of the global plastic waste generation. Globally, 42% of overall plastics produced are consumed by packaging sector and 17% by the construction sector. Whereas in India 35% is consumed by the packaging sector and 23% by construction sector. Bioplastic production is 1% out of 300 million tonnes of conventional plastics produced annually. This review attempts to analyse the plastic waste management rules, legislations, policies and practices in India during the period 1992–2020. The worldwide trend of bioplastic projects is reflected in studies in India, indicating a changed perception of bioplastics as an alternative source to conventional plastics. However, facilitating the implementation of conventional waste plastic processing plant and production of bioplastics in India involves challenges in terms of technology, developing a standardised framework and financial incentives. A legislative framework for the production of bioplastics in India should be developed alongwith an action plan for energy recovery from plastic waste. Markets for conventional plastic waste processing and production of bioplastic projects are not mature in India. This paper addresses the need for developing a roadmap towards efficient planning and sustainable solutions for both conventional plastics and bioplastics.

Plastic waste poses a serious threat to the environment and it has been increasing at an alarming rate. In 2022, global plastic waste generation was reported to be around 380 million tonnes as compared to 353 million tonnes in 2019. Production of liquid fuel from plastic waste is regarded as a viable method for disposing of the plastic and utilizing its energy. Currently, a wide range of technologies have been explored for turning plastic waste into fuel, including the conventional pyrolysis, incineration, gasification and advanced oxidation. However, a systematic summary and comparative analysis of various technologies has still not reported. Traditional non-biodegradable plastic waste (NPW) treatment methods include landfilling and incineration, but these methods encounter bottlenecks and are unable to adequately address NPW issues. This review attempts to present a thorough summary of treatment methods for plastic waste (both conventional and novel treatment technologies that have recently been reported), examine their mechanism and their current state of development. Furthermore, the superiority and drawbacks of each technology are analysed and the prospects of technology application are proposed. By tackling the problems of white pollution and energy scarcity, this review intends to inspire the use of solid waste as a source of energy.

Contamination of water with heavy metals being discharged from several industrial activities has been gaining serious concern from quite a long time. Lead (Pb) is one of the highly toxic and harmful heavy metal that is present in high concentration in contaminated water. Several adsorption techniques have been investigated both using chemical and biological methods. The adsorption of Pb (II) ions was found to be affected by solution pH, contact time, adsorbent dosage, initial metal ion concentration, and temperature. This study compares different chemical and biological methods for lead ion removal based on their properties and adsorption capacity. It is found that the chemical adsorption is quite efficient and chemical adsorbents have a higher removal percentage and adsorption capacity than the biological methods. Among the chemical methods, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) exhibit the highest metal adsorption capacity of 909 mg.g⁻¹ due to their large surface area and high porosity. The ongoing and future research aims at minimising the contamination of wastewater from heavy metals and metal organic frameworks contain the potential to build the gap.

The increasing demand of energy has led to a chaos among the existing energy sources whether it may be thermal, nuclear, hydro or solar power. Hence, it becomes important for an alternate, feasible and sustainable energy source. Municipal solid waste (MSW) serves as an efficient and reliable option for the conversion of waste to energy since long. But the problem exists with the conversion technology which imposes restriction on its use. This paper discusses the different conversion technologies which include incineration, pyrolysis, gasification and biomethanation. The technologies are compared on various physical and chemical parameters with keen interest on environmental sustainability of the waste to energy (WtE) system. The evaluation results reveal that the biological methods are best suited for the waste to energy conversion with least degradation of the environment. Other methods such as incineration, pyrolysis and gasification are quite efficient and give a high yield but they harm the environment in the form of harmful gaseous emissions which certainly lead to global warming and greenhouse effect. This study can overall contribute to the development of more efficient and specific WtE technology which would help lower the MSW reaching the landfills generating cleaner energy to serve the future generation.