In 60 cities in India, 16,876 tons of plastic waste are generated each day. More than 6 million tons of plastic ... end up in landfills a year. Such figures were keeping Medha Tadpatrikar awake at night. She was also deeply troubled by an incident she had witnessed on a safari in India - a deer choking on a plastic packet that it had swallowed. I realized how big this plastic problem is and how every creature on this earth is affected by it," she says of the incident. So Dr. Tadpatrikar resolved to find a way to make plastic waste useful. She and Shirish Phadtare started experimenting in Tadpatrikar's kitchen. "Plastic is made of crude oil, and we wanted to reverse the process to get usable oil," Tadpatrikar explains. This experimenting duo has come up with an operation in the Pune, India, area that benefits the environment in several ways. They are indeed producing fuel, using a process that doesn't emit toxic gases. And by pressing plastic waste into service, they're reducing the amount of plastic headed toward landfills. Moreover, the oil itself is eco-friendly - a better choice than some of the other fuels that villagers living near Pune use. "Much cheaper than any other fuel in the market, this one is used in cooking stoves, in generators, and even to run tractors," explains Tadpatrikar. The fuel ... is carefully collected in bottles, and it's sold to people in 122 villages around Pune at a subsidized rate of 38 rupees (53 cents) per liter.