Abstract: Waste drilling fluids impose immense negative influence on water quality and soil because of their high pollution, diversity and difficulty in disposal. Application of more rigorous environmental protection regulations has imposed new requirements on the disposal of waste muds. This paper summarizes nine different methods of waste mud disposal and their development. Solidification method, thermal desorption method, chemically enhanced solid-liquid separation method, the so-called “waste mud producing while disposing”, and the integration of these technologies are emphasized in this paper, and several popular technologies are compared. The development trend of each technology is predicted and it is concluded that the integration of these technologies is of the most potential technology. The prospects of these technologies are presented based on the current policies and regulations as well as literature research. It is found that the future research work will be focused on the recycling of waste muds at low energy consumption and high efficiency. It is important to not only control the source of pollution, the processing of pollution and the result of waste mud treatment, but also reinforce management and establishment of working system, and develop new technologies.