Since China closed its market, Europe has sent half of its plastic waste to other parts of Asia. And the piled up waste requires the Europe to find new markets to open up and recycle the waste. 

The reason for the closed market is that the plastic is often dirty and unsorted. In early 2018, countries in Asia imported far more of plastic waste from the Europe. But if no more waste can be taken, the only options for the Europe will be either burn it or bury it. Burning can help generate electricity or heat from surplus waste while the Europe also tries to work out what to do with burying. 

Suggested by a scientific adviser, the European waste policies need to consider the benefit of landfill rather than either ban or limit it but do little to restrict ’skyfill’.  Because land is scarce and the landfills produce greenhouse basses and toxin, Europe has supported the use of power plants to burn waste. Although power plants also produce greenhouse gas, but in most of Europe they are exempt from carbon taxes in certain circumstance. It was believed that the way of burying could become a useful approach only if the penalties for greenhouse gas emission in making or burning plastics were far higher than today. The Confederation of European Waste-to-Energy Plants (CEWEP) and the latest major UN assessment of climate change suggest the idea that burying and then mining back plastic is a optional choice since cleaning before burial would be very expensive.  

The proponents of the idea of burying plastic said the Europe should separate and store those carbon-rich waste in a well-controlled landfill as a future mine and a gas-fired power plant is much better than a waste-to-erngy plant for producing electricity. While those that favor waste-to-energy plants believe that waste-to-energy helps replace fossil fuels as a goal in Paris agreement.  The global production of plastics has increased and is expected to continue to rise. It was suggested by some policy-makers that the global focus of plastic policies should be to cut use and burying waste and mining it is a difficult option. It is better to avoid the unnecessary plastics.