It is well established that, to adequately pyrolyze a volume of municipal solid waste, the plasma that is applied to the supply of municipal solid waste should have a stable plasma temperatures of up to 800 degrees Celsius. Referring to FIGS. 9A and 9B, there is provided a pair of plots of the characteristics of the flow of plasma generated by the microwave plasma torch 100 that demonstrate the ability of the microwave plasma torch 100 to achieve the required stable plasma temperature. The plots provided in FIGS. 9A and 9B are plots of the mean plasma temperature and plasma temperature as measured by an S-type thermocouple (set to acquire once per second measurements), where the measurement control was performed using LabVIEW? software. In the specific embodiment shown in the plots, the flow rate of the at least one plasma-forming gas was set at 3.3 SLPM. The plasma temperature reaches a stable temperature of 950 degrees Celsius, and it takes approximately 3 minutes for the flow of plasma to reach the stable temperature. The plot provided in FIG. 9A demonstrates that the mean temperature measurement values do not vary from the temperature values, further indicating the stability of the flow of plasma generated by the microwave plasma torch 100. These temperature measurements indicate that the microwave plasma torch 100 is stable and can work in pyrolysis applications for different materials. The maximum pyrolysis temperature needed for this application is 800 degrees Celsius.