Recycling technologies gained increased importance in the past decades, since environmental issues and the questions of depleting natural resources. Wastes may be considered as resources of valuable secondary raw materials. This literature review aims at compiling the information available on questions arising from the differences between the chemical composition of traditional fuels and chemical industrial raw materials, together with the analytical chemical methods being able to answer these questions. Issues of technical optimisation, the composition of end-products, and their dependence on the technical parameters of pyrolysis will also be discussed.