Creative Industries and the Circular Economy: A Reality Check Across Global Policy, Practice, and Research

Abstract

This paper provides a reality check on circular economy (CE) transitions in the creative industries. Climate change has become a dominant theme across the sector, yet the CE has not emerged as a coherent or widely adopted agenda. While manufacturing and construction are increasingly central to CE policy frameworks, creative production remains marginal and inconsistently represented. Drawing on academic literature (2018–2024), national policy strategies, grey sources, and an exploratory online survey, this study identifies recurring patterns across macro-level drivers, sector norms, and niche innovations. Circular activity is concentrated in downstream, material-focused strategies such as recycling and reuse, whereas more transformative approaches (redesign, refusal, and regenerative practice) remain limited. National government CE strategies largely overlook the sector, resulting in weak policy pressure. Sub-sectors such as advertising, gaming, film, and Createch are notably under-researched despite rising digital resource intensity and environmental impacts. Niche innovations rarely scale, and landscape pressures are not translated into regime change. This paper contributes to CE scholarship by offering the first multi-strand, sector-wide analysis of how circular principles are interpreted, applied, and governed across the creative industries, advancing the understanding of CE transitions in non-industrial, hybrid material–digital contexts.

1. Introduction

The creative industries comprise multiple interconnected sub-sectors whose value chains are often complex, with overlapping partner networks and ecosystems. This complexity is amplified by high levels of fragmentation [1] and a high percentage of freelancers, and micro- and small- to medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) [2]. The ways creative work is produced, often through short projects, flexible networks, and a mix of physical and digital methods, make the sector a useful setting for exploring how circular economy (CE) ideas are understood and put into practice outside of traditional industrial contexts.

The CE is commonly discussed in terms of broad social, economic, and environmental transitions aligned with sustainable development. Kirchherr et al. [3] identified over 100 definitions, grouping them into resource efficiency, economic, and systemic schools. Reike et al. [4] described CE 1.0–3.0 as progressing from industrial ecology and waste management toward the systemic innovation and social transformation necessary to support a shift from the current linear economy (“take–make–waste”) to a more circular, regenerative system. Geissdoerfer et al. [5] identified a lack of conceptual integration with more holistic sustainability concepts. Korhonen et al. [6] took a scientific approach and argue that the two main contributions of the CE are the focus on high-value material cycles and the promise of a “more sustainable production-consumption culture.” Džajić Uršič et al. [7] summarise the current situation as a “proliferation of concepts that are often scattered and overlapping” and that “adopting CE practices varies greatly among businesses and locations.”

In 2024, the launch of the ISO59000 series of transversal standards introduced a CE definition based on a circular flow of resources and value retention that promises greater uniformity of understanding of circularity for organisations. However, it is too soon to measure the impact of this definition, and there was no specific involvement of the creative industries in the work of the Technical Standardization Committee TC 323 in creating the definition in ISO59004 [8].

The creative industries do not map neatly onto current CE paradigms and standards, in part because the CE itself remains defined in ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ways. This ambiguity makes it difficult to articulate what ‘circularity’ should look like in a sector where value is often intangible, symbolic, or experiential. Process flows and outputs in the sector are often intangible and experiential, yet their infrastructures can be resource and energy-intensive [9,10,11]. In every sub-sector, digital technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) are driving a fast-paced socio-technological transformation [12,13,14], creating a hidden “world behind the screen” of data centres and end-user devices and associated energy consumption and CO₂ emissions [15]. This results in dematerialisation of creative production and outputs, creating a spectrum from material-first sub-sectors (e.g., fashion, crafts) to those which are digital-first or experiential (e.g., video games). However, many in the sector operate on a hybrid model across both material and digital domains, combining physical assets with data-intensive production and distribution systems (e.g., gaming engines, streamed media). This trend accelerated during COVID lockdowns, when many creative professionals lost in-person access to customers, studios, venues, and audiences. Examples include complementing physical props, sets, and locations with virtual production environments for film production and using digital twins, 3D modelling, and virtual sampling as well as physical prototypes in fashion design [16].

Within the creative industries, attention to sustainability has largely centred on climate change mitigation through greenhouse gas reduction rather than systemic circular transitions [17]. While CE ideas continue to build momentum [18], the most visible adoption in the creative industries is in the physical resource loops and waste valorisation in fashion as a more materials-based sub-sector. Leading brands liberally use the language of circularity in their marketing material and websites, and there are national strategies for managing textile waste streams, as well as more specific strategies such as the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and a series of proposed new regulations that will come into force over the next five years [19].

The creative industries can contribute to a sustainable development agenda through storytelling, but this is not their primary purpose. Organisations in the sector recognise that they cannot drive systemic social change independently of changes in national strategies and public policy.

This paper therefore contributes to the ongoing CE discourse by focusing on the CE within and across the creative industries and their supply chains (see definition in Section The Creative Industries Scope), examining how CE principles and strategies are currently interpreted, applied, and regulated across the sector’s diverse activities. Rather than engaging with the broader sustainable development agenda or conceptual debates, the research presents the current state of circular practices in the sector, highlighting how academics, policymakers, and creative organisations are embedding or adapting CE ideas within this specific context.

Hence, the principal research questions driving this work are:

• RQ1: How are CE principles interpreted and applied across creative industry sub-sectors, and how are sectoral norms and practices evolving?
• RQ2: How are the creative industries represented in national CE strategies, and what policy patterns or gaps emerge across different countries?
• RQ3: What systemic drivers and responses (across policy, practice, and academic discourse) are shaping the transition to a CE within and across the creative industries?

The Creative Industries Scope

Different countries and institutions define the industry classification and scope of the creative industries differently [20] or use alternative labels such as the “creative economy”. Also, socio-technological transformation is continually creating new classes of creative business that span multiple sub-sectors (e.g., platform businesses for video and music streaming) and other sectors, such as retail (e.g., second-hand fashion markets).

The sub-sector scope used in this research is shown in

Table 1. Sub-sectors of the creative industries used in this research.

Sub-Sectors of the Creative Industries 1
Advertising and Marketing
Architecture
Crafts
Design (Product, Graphic, and Fashion Design)
Film, TV productions, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography (incl. Streaming Media)
Game Design and Game Publishing
IT, Software and Computer Services (including business-to-business Createchs)
Publishing
Music, Performing and Visual arts (including Theatre, Events, and Festivals)

¹ These sub-sectors are derived from those used by the UK government Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS).

. For the purposes of this paper, the focus is on value creation, intellectual property, and creative production (the process of developing creative concepts into physical, experiential, or digital outputs), not on the industrial, retail, or environmental services associated with the waste management of textiles, garments, and construction materials associated with architecture and fashion.

2. Methods and Materials

This study adopted a multi-strand research design to examine the role of the CE within the creative industries, integrating diverse data sources and methods to generate a comprehensive and policy-relevant analysis. The research is the first to be structured around four interrelated strands: academic literature review, grey literature analysis, national strategy review, and a practitioner survey. Each strand addresses different knowledge domains, and together they enable a triangulated and multi-level exploration of circular transitions in the sector.

The first strand (see Figure 1) is a review of recent academic literature (2018–2024), focusing on the CE within the creative industries and specific sub-sectors. The year 2018 was chosen as the start date as the beginning of a first wave of academic literature linking the CE and creative industries, providing a critical mass for review.

After an initial broad search, multiple Boolean searches related to the CE and the sub-sectors of the creative industries (e.g., “circular economy” AND “advertising”) were used to identify candidate papers, which were then filtered for relevance based on title, keywords, and the abstract text. Basic bibliometric techniques [22] were then used to identify high frequency authors and journals in the dataset, highly cited papers, and to analyse keywords and co-words. The results were also classified according to sub-sector.

The second strand reviews national circular strategies using the Chatham House inventory of 73 national strategies as a base [23,24], with revisions to the list after targeted searches. The inclusion criteria used were as follows:

• Only official CE strategies or policy documents published or endorsed by national governments were included. Regional strategies or frameworks were included where they led to substantive national developments (e.g., EU Circular Economy Action Plan);
• Documents had to outline policy frameworks, strategic objectives, or action plans specifically related to the CE. For this paper, no distinction was made based on whether a strategy was operational or was still under development;
• Documents needed to be publicly accessible online, either through government portals or authoritative databases (e.g., Chatham House list);
• Where multiple versions of a strategy existed, the most recent available version was selected to ensure currency of analysis.

Each strategy was made machine-readable, machine-translated where needed, annotated with relevant metadata, and reviewed manually for explicit or implicit references to the creative industries. This provided insights into the policy positioning and visibility of the sector within broader CE agendas.

The third strand uses a custom natural language processing pipeline (a sequence of computational steps such as cleaning text, extracting keywords, classifying content, or generating summaries designed to process and analyse text data as part of an analytical workflow) to analyse grey literature with dates between 2018 and 2024 obtained from academic search engines. These results were primarily web page text and linked Adobe Acrobat formatted reports, toolkits, policy documents, and case studies from consultants, sustainability NGOs, industry associations, government bodies, and sustainability networks and initiatives. This dataset addresses practical developments and emergent issues that may be underrepresented in peer-reviewed literature. Document inclusion was based on identifiable authorship, provenance, and currency, and then the documents were loaded into the pipeline.

Figure 2 details the end-to-end analytical workflow developed to analyse the grey literature search results (see Appendix A, Figure A1 for more detail). The workflow removes special characters, images, and duplication from the results, then harmonises the format of the results and filters them for relevance to the creative industries using regular expressions. Metadata is added before the workflow continues to calculate keyword frequencies and term co-occurrences based on keywords extracted from document summaries [25,26].

The practical application of CE is usually described by R strategies, which offer a structured framework for prioritising circular actions that preserve value and minimise resource use throughout the life cycle of products and services. There are multiple R strategy frameworks available, e.g., 8, 10, or 12Rs [27,28,29], but for this research, the authors have used a 12R framework rather than a more condensed one (see Figure 3). This offers a fuller spectrum of circular strategies and better differentiation between strategies for analytical purposes.

Generative AI is used at two points: cleansing and simplifying grey literature search text files before the text is mapped to the 12R framework and combining individual sets of searches into a human-readable digest per sub-sector for offline review by the authors.

The fourth strand involves an exploratory online practitioner survey with informed consent between 8 March 2025 and 19 April 2025 to gather firsthand data from business professionals across the creative industries. The survey used quantitative and qualitative questions to identify current levels of understanding of the CE concept, patterns of application of the 12R strategies, levels of organisational maturity, CE capabilities and knowledge, and alignment with external pressures, policies, and standards. Also, the survey sought respondents’ views on challenges, gaps, and opportunities. All data gathered was anonymised before analysis.

Finally, a process of synthesis and integration brings together insights from all four strands. The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) [30] is used for critical analysis to explore the drivers and evolution of the CE in the sector. The MLP explains how systemic change emerges through interactions across three levels. The landscape refers to the broader socio-technical context, including macro-level trends and pressures (e.g., cultural shifts, global markets, or climate change) that evolve slowly but exert powerful influence beyond the control of any single actor or sector. The sector regime comprises the policies, norms, rules, systems, and institutions that structure how organisations in the creative industries operate in the sector as a whole or in the individual sub-sectors. Regimes remain stable until challenged by landscape pressures and niche innovations. Niches are protected spaces where new practices, technologies, and business models can be developed and tested outside the dominant regime. Niches (and niche innovations), while often small in scale, are critical to long-term systemic change.

The MLP was chosen because it captures the interactions between niche innovations (especially emerging disruptive technologies such as generative AI), established industry practices, and broader societal and policy landscapes during sustainability transitions [31].

3. Results

3.1. Review and Analysis of Recent Literature

An initial broad search (“creative industries” AND “circular economy”) was performed to identify highly cited articles relevant to the CE and to establish how they relate to the creative industries. For the period 2018 to 2024, 69 references were found with 500 or more citations. In these highly cited references, mention of the creative industries is usually confined to a single sentence or repeated mentions of product design, fashion, or architecture, etc. However, by being highly cited, these references exert influence on those researching the creative industries as these papers shape the current core intellectual structure of CE scholarship for multiple sectors, particularly as it relates to policy, practice, business models, and enabling technologies. Many are literature reviews, framework papers, or conceptual critiques (e.g., “Circular economy: the concept and its limitations” [6], “The relevance of circular economy practices to the sustainable development goals” [32]).

Next, a more tailored search strategy was employed at a creative industries sub-sector level (e.g., advertising). This involved multiple Boolean keyword searches across several academic search engines using inclusion and exclusion logic to return more relevant material. These more precise searches yielded 1766 journal articles, book chapters, and textbooks that were highly relevant to at least one sub-sector in the creative industries.

The overall trend in publication is upward (see Figure 4), with a small drop in 2024, which may be due to incomplete data resulting from reporting lags. Design (product and fashion) dominates the literature, accounting for almost half of the references (see

Table A1. Distribution of references by sub-sector and year. Note that the label “creative technology” is used as a shorthand for IT, Software and Computer Services (including business-to-business Createchs).

Sub-Sector	Year
	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	Total
Advertising	2	6	4	5	5	2	0	24
Architecture	18	24	35	39	37	35	20	208
Crafts	4	3	5	2	4	13	13	44
Creative Technology	4	10	17	19	18	25	27	120
Design (Product, Packaging, and Materials)	86	97	110	106	112	162	134	807
Events and Festivals	1	1	3	5	9	9	9	37
Fashion and Textile Design	19	29	24	34	52	41	33	232
Film and TV	4	5	4	4	16	15	15	63
Games	3	1	3	6	6	11	7	37
Marketing	16	10	11	13	13	12	10	85
Music	0	2	2	2	1	4	1	12
Performing Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	1	1	1	5	2	8	11	29
Publishing	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	1
Cross-sector	8	12	9	10	13	9	6	67
Total	166	201	228	250	289	346	286	1766

for the distribution of references by sub-sector and year).

When interpreting these publication statistics, it is important to note that references from the construction industry and waste management literature associated with municipal recycling of garments and textiles were excluded from these searches, as they are out of scope for the purposes of this paper.

Both advertising and marketing are relatively flat year-on-year, but the volume in marketing is higher. These marketing references are mostly concerned with consumer behaviour and pricing related to the CE. Architecture appears to have peaked in 2021, with a steady decline since then (and a sharp drop in 2024), although this may simply be a lag in the publication process. Creative technology shows a stable upward trend with small year-on-year increases. Performing arts (theatre and dance) and crafts show marked increases in the last two years. Publishing does not appear to be an area of research.

Cross-sector references (e.g., such as those that study adoption of one of the 12R strategies in multiple sub-sectors, or between the creative industries and another sector) are characterised by low and inconsistent activity. This is an important observation as it either means that (i) there is a lack of dedicated scholarship on the creative industries as a whole, or that (ii) researchers are funded to work within sub-sector boundaries, or that (iii) the research on the sector is occurring but is subsumed under the dominant sub-sector or R strategy in reporting.

Table 2. Top 20 keywords.

Keyword	Count
circular economy	1217
design	608
fashion	206
architecture	168
circular design	137
fashion industry	101
business model	97
Marketing	80
supply chain	78
case study	71
product design	69
literature review	66
film production	64
circular fashion	63
sustainable development	62
Sustainability	61
Economy	59
Industry	55
circular economy principle	53
creative technology	51

lists the top 20 keywords in the CE in the creative industry dataset. Where references were not supplied with the original reference, keywords were machine generated.

Table 3. Top 20 co-occurrences.

Keyword 1	Keyword 2	Count
circular economy	design	396
circular economy	fashion	175
architecture	circular economy	137
circular economy	fashion industry	95
business model	circular economy	79
circular design	circular economy	68
circular economy	supply chain	64
circular economy	marketing	62
circular economy	circular fashion	57
circular economy	product design	55
circular economy	film production	54
circular economy	literature review	53
circular economy	economy principle	53
case study	circular economy	51
circular economy	circular transition	51
circular economy	economy fashion	46
circular economy	sustainable development	44
circular economy	sustainability	43
design	product	43
circular economy	fashion textile	38

lists the top 20 keyword co-occurrences in the dataset.

Table 2, Table 3 and Table A1 suggest that the bulk of the literature is focused on the design, architecture, and fashion sub-sectors. The topic modelling of article titles [33] highlights a strong focus on circular design, product development, and product–service systems [34,35,36], particularly in fashion and architecture. There is also significant attention paid to business models, digital innovation, and data-driven value creation, with multiple studies examining how Industry 4.0 technologies like digital twins and blockchain support circular supply chains and services in the creative industries [13,37,38,39].

Specifically, within the design references, there is a distinct sub-cluster around material innovation (for architecture, products, packaging, and fashion), much of which discusses moving to bio-based materials and the implications for designers and architects [40,41].

Another cluster centres on consumer engagement, change in behaviour, and secondary markets [42,43], reflecting interest in how end-users participate in circular practices, mostly in the fashion sub-sector. Cultural narratives and storytelling also emerge as mechanisms for promoting awareness and transition [44], and this intersects with work on social responsibility, equity, and community-mending cultures [45,46].

A further thematic area addresses policy frameworks, regulation, and governance, especially at the European level [47,48,49]. These papers discuss the alignment (or misalignment) between public policy and citizen engagement, the role of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and evolving standards and legislation supporting CE transitions.

There is also a prominent strand of papers that cluster together research on systemic perspectives and technical tools aimed at understanding circularity. At the higher level, researchers on systems-level thinking frame how the creative industries can be analysed in terms of interconnections, boundaries, and feedback loops [50]. At the more applied level, the research offers critiques of life cycle assessment, material flow analysis, and circularity metrics within sub-sectors such as architecture and media streaming as ways to measure circular performance at product and organisational scales [50,51,52].

Creative technology appears last in the top 20 keywords list, but the topic analysis identifies a growing discourse around technological transformation, including discussion of the environmental benefits of AI and digital platforms [53,54]. However, there is relatively little discussion of the negative environmental impacts of these technologies in the dataset [55]. This lack of coverage is likely due to the speed with which energy-intensive technologies such as blockchain and generative AI have become a feature of the creative industries.

Throughout the literature, there is evidence of potential radical innovations in specific sub-sectors. The literature contains many and varied examples of small-scale experiments, proofs of concept, and entrepreneurial startups. Examples include the following:

• Product and service design: numerous titles refer to “circular product design” and “design for deconstruction” (in architectural design) as niche experiments in new forms of design beyond ecodesign.
• Digital tools and platforms. Mentions of “digital twins” and “virtual and augmented reality” show early-stage integration of technology in circular creative workflows.
• Material experimentation. Emerging concepts like “urban mining” for reuse of architectural materials and bio-based materials for fashion show strong niche-level explorations of alternatives to consumption of primary resources and those derived from fossil fuels.

However, there is little evidence in the literature of these innovations reaching a scale where linear systems are transformed into circular ones.

Authors and Sources

It can take a few years for papers to build up high citation counts, so another way to understand the emerging shape of the literature is to identify individuals whose work appears frequently in the dataset (and where their work is published), which can suggest recurring perspectives, themes, or methodological approaches that influence trends in the literature.

Table A2. Authors with five or more references in the dataset. Note that this list contains only the number of references pertaining to the creative industries and not the entire output of each author.

Author	ORCID ID	Primary Affiliation	Reference Count in Dataset
Bakker, C [57,62]	0000-0001-9982-8788	TUDelft, Netherlands	20
Balkenende, R [57]	Not Available	LLeiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities	14
Pigosso, D [36,58]	0000-0001-7277-0360	Technical University of Denmark, DTU	13
McAloone, T [36,58]	0000-0002-9776-3340	Technical University of Denmark, DTU	11
Bocken, N [5,56,62]	0000-0003-0137-4074	Maastricht University, Netherlands	10
Garza-Reyes, JA	0000-0002-5493-877X	University of Derby, United Kingdom	8
Zorpas, A [60]	0000-0002-8154-5656	Open University of Cyprus	7
Sarkis, J [64]	0000-0003-0143-804X	Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA	7
Sassanelli, C [59,67]	0000-0003-3603-9735	Politecnico di Bari, Italy	7
Charter, M [1,2,93,99,100]	0000-0001-9743-4187	University for the Creative Arts, United Kingdom	6
Rosa, P [59,67]	0000-0003-3957-707X	Politecnico di Milano, Italy	6
Boks, C [61]	0000-0002-3410-0582	Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway	6
Pieroni, M	0000-0003-2968-7881	Aalborg University,	6
Andrews, D	0000-0002-5761-3591 2012 2024	London Southbank University, United Kingdom	6
Saidani, M	0000-0002-8269-4477	Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Luxembourg	6
Authors with 5 References
Dey, P [66]; Awan, U; Papamichael [60], I; Centobelli [63], P; Kim, H; Broega, A; Niero [36], M; Velenturf, A; Henninger, C [65]; Terzi, S [59,67]; Morone, P; Bressanelli, G; Urbinati [59,63], A; Chiaroni, D [59,63]; Sumter, D; Muthu, S; Cheshire, D; Dabaieh, M; Sundin, E

shows authors with five or more references between 2018 and 2024, and

Table A3. Top 20 reference sources.

Journal, Conference Proceedings, Books	Reference Type	Reference Count in Dataset
Sustainability	Journal	112
Journal of Cleaner Production	Journal	72
Resources, Conservation and Recycling	Journal	34
Business Strategy and the Environment	Journal	34
Circular Economy and Sustainability	Journal	25
Journal of Industrial Ecology	Journal	16
Sustainable Production and Consumption	Journal	16
EcoDesign for Sustainable Products, Services and Social Systems II	Edited Book	15
Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes	Edited Book	15
International Journal of Production Research	Journal	12
Management Decision	Journal	11
Science of the Total Environment	Journal	11
Waste Management & Research: The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy	Journal	11
EcoDesign for Sustainable Products, Services and Social Systems I	Edited Book	11
Journal of Environmental Management	Journal	10
Procedia CIRP	Journal	10
Polymers	Journal	9
Production Planning & Control	Journal	9
Energies	Journal	9
Proceedings of IDEAS 2022	Proceedings	9

shows the leading journals, conferences, and textbooks in that period. Paper counts are based solely on the inclusion and exclusion criteria used in this study and do not necessarily reflect total career output or overall productivity. 40% of the papers published by these authors are design-related, covering the following:

• Design-led circular strategies (e.g., [56,57]). This cluster of references focuses on design thinking, innovation, and industry transformation. Fashion and textiles are commonly mentioned.
• Product and service design for circularity in one or more creative industries sub-sectors (e.g., [36,58,59]). These references critique case studies and design interventions that build systemic circularity in architecture, product design, and fashion systems.
• Circular design and behaviour change in creative production (e.g., [60,61]). These references address the CE across multiple sub-sectors. This cluster of references also contains reflections on post-COVID-19 behaviour changes (e.g., the impact on sharing behaviour).

The remaining references cover business model innovation and platform-based models (e.g., [62,63]), green supply chains (e.g., [64,65]), and discussions of challenges and frameworks for implementing CE strategies (e.g., [66]).

One in five papers from the higher-frequency authors include observations concerning the importance of Industry 4.0 and/or digital factors as enablers of CE adoption in the creative industries (e.g., [67]). However, these references provide little specificity to individual sub-sectors, but there are articles from authors outside of this high-frequency cohort that provide the specifics (e.g., see Čuden et al. for fashion [68]), suggesting that this is still a niche research area.

Overall, there are many similarities between the higher-frequency authors’ areas of interest and those of the highly cited authors. In comparison with highly cited papers, frequently occurring authors are more likely to write about the challenges of orchestration and integration of CE practices, especially in creative industries’ commercial or business contexts. The higher-frequency authors, however, are less likely to write about European policy, UN SDGs, and alignment of governance frameworks.

These findings are similar to those of the 2017 paper by Geissdoerfer et al. that researched the emergence of the CE as a paradigm and which had the Journal of Cleaner Production, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, and Sustainability as the top three journals [5]. However, these are not journals closely associated with the creative industries (e.g., Design Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Architecture, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Marketing, etc.).

Only one set of conference proceedings made the top 20 list, but this may be i) because relevant conferences do not publish proceedings or ii) a metadata issue as there is inconsistency in how the online sources use report titles, reference types, keywords, etc.

3.2. Analysis of National CE Strategies

Table A4. List of countries included in the review of national CE strategies.

Albania	England	Luxembourg	Scotland
Angola	Estonia	Malaysia	Serbia
Argentina	Finland	Malta	Slovak Republic
Australia	France	Mauritius	Slovenia
Austria	Georgia	Moldova	South Africa
Bangladesh	Germany	Montenegro	South Korea
Belarus	Greece	Morocco	Spain
Belgium	Guinea-Bissau	Netherlands	Sweden
Brazil	Hungary	New Zealand	Switzerland
Cambodia	India	Nigeria	Taiwan
Canada	Indonesia	Northern Ireland	Thailand
Chile	Ireland	Panama	Turkey
China	Italy	Peru	UAE
Colombia	Japan	Poland	Ukraine
Costa Rica	Kenya	Portugal	Uruguay
Czechia	Kosovo	Qatar	Vietnam
Denmark	Latvia	Romania	Wales
Ecuador	Lithuania	Rwanda

lists the 73 national CE strategies reviewed (the United Kingdom’s devolved nations were reviewed separately as there is no current integrated strategy). In addition, three regional frameworks were included: European Commission Circular Economy Action Plan, the ASEAN Framework, and the Africa Circular Economy Facility. The common policy elements of these plans are shown in Figure 5.

Across these documents, there is a consistent pattern: in terms of sectoral programmes, the creative industries are largely excluded. When mentioned, references are typically focused on waste-related activities such as textile recycling, or broad statements about ecodesign, or in the context of campaigning for a change in citizen behaviour. This omission persists even when the creative industries have a significant national economic footprint. This may be due to (i) a lack of engagement by the creative industries sector with policymaking; (ii) a matter of priority—policymakers are likely to have focused on the sectors with the largest waste streams in their economies; or (iii) the creative industries being perceived as low impact.

There are notable exceptions. Four national strategies (Luxembourg [69], Montenegro [70], Rwanda [71], and Slovenia [72]) explicitly identify the creative industries as a priority sector in respect of their national CE transitions. Luxembourg positions the sector as a driver of sustainable design and economic diversification, promoting collaboration through its Creative Industries Cluster. Rwanda includes the creative economy within its green growth strategy, linking it to innovation, youth employment, and low-carbon entrepreneurship (including digital circularity). Slovenia frames the sector as an agent of behavioural and cultural change, emphasising the role of storytelling, design, and media in public engagement. Montenegro similarly advocates for a “circular culture,” highlighting the importance of the creative industries in shaping values and embedding circularity within education and everyday life. However, even in these national strategies, there is a lack of detail towards how the entire sector should move forward.

Since the national CE strategies focus on sectors with hard infrastructures and tangible flows, the “World Behind the Screen” (the tangible impact of digital production and data centres, increasingly central to creative workflows) remains unaddressed. This may be due to a lack of awareness of the technological acceleration in the sector. In some cases, dematerialisation trends, such as digital fashion and virtual production, are presented as inherently sustainable, despite evidence of their growing energy and e-waste footprints [73].

While mentions of clean or renewable energy are common, the linkage between CE, net zero targets, and decarbonisation actions is not directly addressed in national CE strategies. This example from the Australian strategy [74] is typical of the level of detail found: “Circular economy strategies also support a sustainable, nature positive net zero transition, by ensuring technologies, materials, and infrastructure developed during the transition can be recovered and reused at their end of life”. This disconnect most likely stems from siloed ownership in government.

The national CE strategies assume that technological and regulatory innovation can decouple growth from environmental harm without fundamentally challenging existing consumption patterns (a view often repeated in the technology sector and in particular, Silicon Valley). Despite the rapidly expanding literature (see Wiedenhofer et al. [75]), there is no scientific proof that decoupling will deliver the expected benefits. Also, if national CE policy frameworks focus narrowly on technological fixes and economic efficiency, creative work that promotes social justice, intergenerational equity, and cultural transformation as part of the CE may be overlooked.

Implications for the Creative Industries of Market-Driven Approaches

The national CE strategies analysed use the language of sustainable development and public good, yet most anticipate transition via predominantly market-driven mechanisms, including green finance and bonds to stimulate CE investment; the mobilisation of private capital through venture and equity markets; price-based incentives to favour secondary resources; public procurement clauses to create demand for circular products; and investment in waste and digital infrastructures. The strategies also promote innovation in areas such as AI-enabled recycling, blockchain traceability, and circular design tools, typically under light-touch regulatory regimes.

A market-driven approach narrows the scope of circular transition to those activities that generate measurable economic returns, investable assets, and technology-led efficiencies [76]. While such mechanisms can accelerate circular innovation in capital-intensive parts of the sector, they tend to de-prioritise social, cultural, and place-based dimensions of the CE, which are important to the creative industries.

This market-oriented framing carries other implications for the creative industries. First, technology-centred CE interventions may marginalise low-tech circular practices found in crafts, fashion, theatre, and community-based repair, whose contribution lies in local value retention rather than innovation-led growth. Second, creative organisations may be expected to evidence circularity through quantitative indicators (e.g., carbon accounting, material traceability), even when their core contribution is symbolic, cultural [7], or behavioural. Finally, digital-first sub-sectors (such as advertising, gaming, and Createch) may benefit disproportionately, where immersive storytelling, data tools, or digital waste reduction technologies align with national CE priorities.

3.3. Grey Literature Analysis

Grey literature searches for the CE in the creative industries yielded 54,538 initial results, a high proportion of which were duplicates or short entries with links pointing to the same source. After deduplication, removal of short and off-topic entries, adverts, pay-walled articles, and academic journal entries, this gave 4791 unique items (known as ‘snippets’) that had been screened for relevance to the CE across the sub-sectors of the creative industries. These snippets were used for text analytics.

Table A5. Breakdown of grey sources by sub-sector.

Sub-Sector	Number of Snippets
Design (Product, Graphic, and Fashion Design)	885
Film, TV productions, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography (incl. Streaming Media)	812
Fashion, but more closely aligned with manufacturing and post-consumer waste streams	809
IT, Software and Computer Services (including business-to-business Createchs)	461
Architecture	342
Advertising and Marketing	195
Music, Performing and Visual arts (including Theatre, Events, and Festivals)	186
Crafts	148
Cross-sector entries	137
Game Design and Game Publishing	37
Publishing	7
Total used for text analytics	4791

gives the breakdown of the search results by sub-sector, and

Table A6. Breakdown of source types found in grey literature by sub-sector.

Source Type	Number of Snippets
Industry handbooks or guidance	1154
Government: International or national policy/strategy	862
Government: Sector legislation/regulation	556
Working papers or reports from research	493
Government: Local government initiatives	470
NGO reports	388
Consultant reports	350
Standards	211
Industry practitioner generated content	158
Government: Reports by public agencies	149

provides a breakdown by the dominant type of content found in each snippet. National and international standards and government policies and strategies account for 34% of the results. Twenty-five percent of the grey results are handbooks and other forms of practical CE guidance written by practitioners or industry experts and consultants. The remainder are a mix of research working papers, NGO reports, local government initiatives, and reports from public agencies.

Excluding standards and government policy, strategy, and other regulatory content, 49% of the results were tagged as How-To/Practical vs. 51% Theory/Conceptual. Tagging was based on keyword patterns extracted from handbooks and other practical documents where the goal is actionable insights or tool use rather than abstract theorisation. In terms of concepts or frameworks, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) is mentioned 565 unique times in the dataset (the most mentions), suggesting it is a dominant source and general reference point for CE thinking in the creative industries. However, most of the EMF content related to the sector is oriented towards fashion. In contrast, there are 207 unique mentions of the UN SDGs, suggesting a weaker relationship (but still strong).

Table A7. Mapping of text analytics results to the level of the MLP.

Level	Number of Snippets
Sector regime	2348
Niche innovations in the sector	1964
Landscape pressures on the sector	479

shows the grey literature results classified by the different levels of the MLP. Ten percent of the search results were tagged as landscape content. This landscape content is high-level and less specific to the creative industries, even when the target audience is the sector. Fifty-seven percent of the content at this level comprises NGO, governmental, and intergovernmental CE publications that describe the CE concept and build the case for circularity transitions based on generic drivers such as climate change and public pressure for waste reduction. A typical example is the United Nations Economist Network Creative Economy publication “New Economics for Sustainable Development” [77] that summarises CE concepts in the context of the creative industries and details the policy implications at the global and country level. Another example is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Creative Outlook 2024 [78] which highlights a few examples of circular business practices and their link to environmental and economic policies. This landscape-level content also contains descriptions of regional and global governance frameworks (e.g., the various UN initiatives, the European Green Deal, and various agreements on limiting emissions).

Only 21% of the landscape-level content comes directly from organisations in the creative industries, specifically larger companies (e.g., the BBC, Universal Studios, Decathlon) and international networks and initiatives (e.g., Playing for the Planet). These organisations are likely to have dedicated resources capable of producing this type of content.

Content associated with the sectoral regime accounts for nearly half of the grey literature reviewed. Much of this material focuses on how specific sub-sectors are responding, or are expected to respond, to climate change and broader landscape pressures for sustainable development. It is uncommon for the creative industries to be examined as an integrated whole; instead, most documents address individual sub-sectors from the perspective of national and local policy, regulatory frameworks, industry-led circularity initiatives, the impacts of digitalisation, and changes to supply chains and infrastructure required for low-carbon or circular operations. The literature also highlights institutional and structural barriers that continue to constrain transition across the sector.

The volume and diversity of sector regime content suggests that there is an extensive exploration of the pre-requisites and practical actions needed for regime-level change, at least within a subset of sub-sectors. For instance, there are early examples of sub-sectors collaborating to investigate possible pathways through which symbiotic networks can generate environmental and economic benefits. Across film production, music, live events, and theatre, there are ad hoc examples of material/resource exchanges involving secondary materials from set fabrication and costume making. Based on grey sources, the latest film and TV campuses and creative production parks are investigating joint provision of material storage, digital infrastructures, manufacturing, waste logistics, energy, water, and heat across facilities. One example is MediaCityUK who operate a campus-wide trigeneration energy centre (electricity, heating and cooling) and provides shared utilities to multiple broadcasters and production facilities. There are parallels with the early development of industrial symbiosis i.e., the collaborative exchange of materials, energy, water, and by-products between firms or sectors to improve resource efficiency and reduce environmental impact in manufacturing. Chertow [79] identified stakeholder processes (e.g., mediated workshops, cluster governance) and resource input–output matching as key enablers, and similar dynamics are now emerging within the creative industries.

At a niche level (40% of the content), the grey literature contains diverse examples of CE experiments, pilots, startups, and emerging business models. Examples include 3D printing startups using biopolymers for on-demand products, corporate take-back and resale initiatives such as that at IKEA, and tools that take AI-generated art and place it into ready-to-use game-engine environments for virtual production in advertising, film, and TV. However, the challenge of moving beyond endless pilots to scale is apparent from industry observers and the businesses themselves (e.g., see [80] for an elaboration of the challenges for Createch).

Clustering of creative organisations is a characteristic of the sector worldwide, and government-backed creative clusters are mentioned in grey sources as important for innovation, sustainability, and equity (for an example, see the final report on the UK Creative Clusters Programme [81]). However, the CE typically does not feature in these posts in any substantive fashion.

The grey literature contains some of the most up-to-date and influential sources of information and practical guidance for the creative industries. For example, reports on investigations into materials [82], virtual film production (see [10,12]), industry handbooks such as the Theatre Green Book, sector guidance such as World Business Council for Sustainable Development Circular Transition Indicators for Fashion and Textiles, and standards such as BAFTA Albert. However, this information is highly fragmented and difficult to navigate.

Evidence of Application of 12R Strategies

To further examine the practical application of the 12R strategies to the creative industries, additional text analytics were applied to the dataset to identify how the 12R strategies map out across the different sub-sectors. In some cases, sub-sectors have been further divided where this yielded meaningful findings, e.g., separating mass market fashion from designer fashion, radio and podcasts from TV and film, and theatre from the rest of the performing arts. The results are presented in Figure 6. A “rule of thumb” is that a value greater than five is a high frequency, and greater than 10 is very high. These thresholds serve as interpretive heuristics, commonly used in exploratory text analysis to indicate relative prominence across categories rather than statistical significance [83].

This analysis shows that different sub-sectors (or segments within the sub-sector) are oriented towards different combinations of R strategies, and that three of the 12Rs are little mentioned (remanufacture, refurbish, and refuse). However, it is also possible that there are different understandings of the 12Rs between sub-sectors.

One anomaly is that the radio and podcasts segment has a high occurrence in the data due to the titles of the shows in the dataset being relevant (e.g., using words like “repair”). Hence, these results should not be taken as a commentary on the business of radio or podcasting.

Figure 7 presents the co-occurrences of the 12Rs in the dataset (a value of greater than 1.6% represents a significant co-occurrence at the 95% confidence level derived from a binomial one-sided test under the assumption of independence between terms). These pairings suggest natural groupings in how people write and think about CE topics. Redesign appears in three of the top five high-frequency co-occurrences. Redesign pairs particularly strongly with reduce, rethink, and recycle, reflecting its core role as a bridge between R strategies (e.g., the more technical strategies such as recycle, and strategic ones such as rethink). Reduce is also prominent (appears in three high-frequency pairs), implying that it is used in multi-dimensional contexts, i.e., not just about cutting resource use, but also reframing and reimagining designs, and systems.

3.4. Online Survey of Practitioners

The exploratory survey was conducted during March and April 2025 and gathered 80 responses with informed consent from a diverse cross-section of professionals working within the sector and its supporting ecosystems. An initial analysis of the survey is contained in the report entitled “The Circular Economy in the Creative Industries: Progress, Challenges, and Hard Truths” [1]. This paper builds on that high-level analysis to present more granularity concerning current practices and future intentions for the sector through new cross-tabulations for each sub-sector.

The results from the survey are indicative rather than definitive due to the low response rate and some of the biases present. Of the 80 responses, 41 were from the target demographic, including partial responses, constraining some of the analyses and sub-sector representation (see

Table A8. What is your main relationship to the Creative Industries?

Answer Choice	Responses	Count
I work in one or more of the sub-sectors of the Creative Industries	62.7%	42
I am a consultant working with the Creative Industries	14.9%	10
I am an educator	13.4%	9
I am a supplier to one or more of the sub-sectors of the Creative Industries	4.5%	3
I am a policymaker focused on the Creative Industries	1.5%	1
I am a postgraduate or academic studying the Creative Industries	1.5%	1
I am a student in vocational or higher education	1.5%	1
Total		67

for sub-sector breakdown, and

Table A9. Breakdown of survey responses by sub-sector showing the number fully completing the survey.

Sub-Sectors	Fully Completed Responses
Music, Performing and Visual arts (incl. Theatre)	13
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	7
Design (incl. Graphic, Product, and Fashion	6
IT, Software and Computer Services (including Createch)	5
Architecture	4
Other (Multiple Sub-Sectors)	2
Publishing	2
Advertising and Marketing	1
Crafts	1
Total	41

,

Table A10. What is your role?

Answer Choice	Responses	Count
Creative/Designer/Artist/Maker	29.3%	12
Manager/Producer/Director	26.8%	11
Senior Manager/Organisation leader	26.8%	11
Sustainability Lead/Officer	14.6%	6
Technician/Craftsperson	2.4%	1
Other (please specify)	0.0%	0
Total		41

and

Table A11. What is the size of your organisation?

Answer Choice	Responses	Count
Freelancer/Self-employed	26.8%	11
Micro (<10 employees)	51.2%	21
Small (10–49 employees)	9.8%	4
Medium (50–249 employees)	4.9%	2
Large (250+ employees)	7.3%	3
Total		41

for the participant demographics). Despite targeting a global audience, 80% of the responses came from the UK (the rest came from Western Europe, the Nordics, the Middle East, and the USA). Organisationally, the responses reflect the sector’s characteristic composition (90% were freelancers or MSMEs), and hold a wide range of roles, including creatives, producers, technicians, and those in strategic or managerial positions related to sustainability.

The high proportion of responses from music and the performing and visual arts (including theatre) introduces an additional bias into the results. The higher number of survey responses may reflect a greater level of interest in the CE in that sub-sector, but it may also be due to the way that participants were recruited, i.e., including some respondents via an active WhatsApp group that covered music/events as the core focus.

Hence, while the survey adds practitioner perspectives, given the small cell counts in several sub-sectors and the high UK weighting, any generalisations have been treated with caution and triangulated with the policy, the literature, and grey evidence.

3.4.1. Conceptual Understanding vs. Practical Strategies

The survey suggests that there is ambiguity over the understanding of the concept and definitions such as those contained in ISO59004 [8]. When presented with seven possible definitions, votes were spread across six of them (the option not selected was “a regulatory and compliance framework driven by government policies and industry standards”). Regarding ISO59004 [8], 32% of the participants found the definition difficult to understand and apply to their sub-sector [1].

However, respondents are clearer on the practical application of the 12R strategies by sub-sector (see

Table A16. Breakdown by sub-sector and R strategy of ‘frequently applied’ or ‘common practice’ responses. Advertising and Publishing have not been included as there is no data.

Sub-Sector		Number or Percentage Responding ‘Frequently Applied’ or ‘Common Practice’
	Sample Size	Refuse	Rethink	Reduce	Reuse	Repair	Refurbish	Remanufacture	Repurpose	Recycle	Recover	Regenerate	Redesign
Architecture	4	1	1	2	2	1	1	1	1	2	1	0	1
Architecture (%)		25	25	50	50	25	25	25	25	50	25	0	25
Crafts	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	1	0	1
Crafts (%)		0	100	0	0	0	100	100	0	100	100	0	100
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	5	3	1	3	2	2	0	2	2	2	2	1	3
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion) (%)		60	20	60	40	40	0	40	40	40	40	20	60
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	4	1	1	1	3	1	2	1	1	4	2	1	0
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography (%)		25	25	25	75	25	50	25	25	100	50	25	0
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	4	2	3	2	2	1	1	1	2	2	1	0	3
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch) (%)		50	75	50	50	25	25	25	50	50	25	0	75
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	8	5	5	3	7	6	3	3	5	7	2	0	2
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance) (%)		63	63	38	88	75	38	38	63	88	25	0	25
Other (Multi-Sector)	2	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Other (Multi-Sector) (%)		50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50	50

), and the survey results are consistent with the analysis of the grey literature. Reduce, recycle, and reuse have the highest representation across the sector. Remanufacture, refurbish, and regenerate strategies are less frequently reported (<25% in most sub-sectors), suggesting that one or more face a lack of awareness, knowledge, expertise, applicability, or access to relevant infrastructure. Refuse and rethink also show low engagement, potentially showing challenges in upstream strategic design thinking or procurement-level decisions. For example, an advertising agency may find it economically unattractive to challenge a client brief or turn down work. Another way to look at this is that more technical or physical Rs (like recycle, reuse, reduce) dominate, while more abstract or upstream Rs (like rethink, refuse, redesign) are underrepresented. From the comments in the survey, there is a perception that some Rs only apply to product-related sub-sectors (e.g., design, architecture), and some respondents replied that certain Rs were not applicable to them.

Ignoring the lowest sample size sub-sectors, the strongest responses across the breadth of the 12Rs come from three sub-sectors: design; film, TV, video, radio, photography, and technology; and music and the performing and visual arts. The relatively high percentages from the technology sub-sector across most of the 12Rs contrasts with earlier observations about priority and maturity. One interpretation is that respondents from this sub-sector are taking relevant actions but do not connect those actions to the overarching CE concept level.

Overall, the survey portrays organisations in the sector as fragmented in their understanding and application of CE. There is uneven engagement with CE principles within and across sub-sectors, and for all sizes of organisation. Practical strategies are being applied, but focus mostly on concrete, familiar actions such as recycling, reuse, and reduction.

3.4.2. Drivers and Priorities

To understand the drivers for a circularity transition in the sector, the survey asked questions about priorities and sources of pressure for change. In terms of priority rankings,

Table A12. Priority rankings by sub-sector.

Sub-Sector	Ranking for Transitioning to Circular Business Models (e.g., Leasing, Reuse, Remanufacturing)	Ranking for Improving Resource Efficiency and Reducing Waste	Ranking for Reducing Carbon Emissions and Energy Consumption	Top Priority
Advertising/Marketing	No Data	No Data	No Data	No Data
Architecture	10	9	4	Growth and scaling operations
Crafts	8	Not ranked	3	Ensuring I/my organisation is financially viable
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	6	10	7	Growth and scaling operations
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	11	3	2	Innovation and new product/service development
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	8	Not ranked	Not ranked	Innovation and new product/service development
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	9	2	1	Reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption
Publishing	7	Not ranked	6	Ensuring I/my organisation is financially viable
Other (Multi-Sector)	5	3	2	Growth and scaling operations

shows the breakdown by sub-sector based on a ranking of 13 business areas, including the three CE ones shown in the table.

The rankings suggest that circular business models are currently low priority across the sector, but there are wide variations in the ranking for resource efficiency and decarbonisation. One surprising finding given the amount of coverage in the press concerning data centres (especially those for AI) is that the technology sub-sector respondents chose not to rank reducing emissions, energy, and waste as priorities.

To further understand prioritisation, respondents were asked about the importance of the CE to their sub-sector. For each sub-sector, the score was greater than four out of five (where five is very important), except for the technology sub-sector which had a mean score of 2.8 (see

Table A13. Mean importance of the CE for each sub-sector. Mean for the entire sector is 4.0.

Sub-Sector	Sample Size	Mean
Advertising/Marketing	0	No Data
Architecture	4	4.5
Crafts	1	5.0
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	6	4.5
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	6	4.3
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	5	2.8
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	10	4.2
Publishing	0	No Data
Other (Multi-Sector)	2	4.0

).

Table A14. Mean level of current pressure by sub-sector. Mean for the entire sector is 2.4.

Sub-Sector	Sample Size	Mean
Advertising/Marketing	0	No Data
Architecture	4	2.5
Crafts	1	2.0
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	6	2.5
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	6	2.5
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	5	1.8
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	10	2.7
Publishing	0	No Data
Other (Multi-Sector)	2	2.5

tabulates the level of pressure for adopting CE practices by sub-sector (where five is very high). Again, the technology sub-sector scores low compared to other sub-sectors, which may explain the low priority.

Table 4. Comparison of top-ranked sources of pressure by sub-sector (current, future).

Sub-Sector	Top-Ranked Source Currently	Top-Ranked Source in the Future
Advertising/Marketing	No Data	No Data
Architecture	Environmental NGOs or activists	Government regulations or policies
Crafts	Government regulations or policies	Government regulations or policies
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	Artists/creators/designers/makers	Artists/creators/designers/makers
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	Industry associations/guilds	Government regulations or policies
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	Public opinion or media coverage	Government regulations or policies
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	Government regulations or policies	Government regulations or policies
Other (Multi-Sector)	Artists/creators/designers/makers	Public opinion or media coverage
Publishing	Government regulations or policies	Government regulations or policies

shows the sub-sector variation in terms of sources of pressure to transition, today and in the future. It is implied that there is little regulatory pressure on the sector today and, while there is a spread of opinions about current sources, government regulations or policies are overwhelmingly viewed as the major source of pressure in the future. Given the volume of impending regulation across multiple countries aimed at fashion businesses, regulation might have been expected to be ranked higher. The survey results for fashion in Table 4 might be due to (i) sampling bias (few fashion businesses compared to other types of design) or (ii) anticipation of the continued dominant influence of fashion designers.

A more regulated future may prove a challenge for some in the sector, as knowledge and readiness for regulation (e.g., extended producer responsibility, ecodesign regulations, etc.) and standards such as BS8001 and ISO 59000 series are low in multiple sub-sectors (see

Table A15. Respondents stating that they are aware of relevant regulations and standards by sub-sector.

Sub-Sector	Sample Size	Awareness of CE-Related Regulation	Awareness of Any CE-Related Standards
Advertising/Marketing	No Data	No Data	No Data
Architecture	4	1	1
Crafts	1	1	1
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	5	3	2
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	5	2	2
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	5	0	1
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	9	2	2
Publishing	No Data	No Data	No Data
Other (Multi-Sector)	2	1	1

). Note that ‘awareness’ does not imply that companies are ready for regulation or using standards.

3.4.3. Readiness and Maturity

When asked how prepared organisations are to implement changes needed to meet a range of CE legislation, except for local, national, or regional waste management regulations (e.g., EU Waste Framework Directive), no sub-sector scored greater than 10%. There is clearly a knowledge and readiness gap and, more generally, only 36% said they were very knowledgeable or experts concerning the CE, and the majority came from the design (both product and fashion), film and TV, music, and performing arts sub-sectors. The crafts and the technology sub-sectors’ respondents appeared to be the least knowledgeable (although only one craft respondent answered that question). 32% of respondents were unaware of any voluntary guidelines, frameworks, or toolkits for implementing CE practices, and fewer than 50% of respondents had received training or external guidance (despite there being a significant amount of self-guided learning available in the grey literature). However, the influence of guidance, standards, and tools originating from within the creative industries appears limited currently.

Another area of enquiry in the survey is organisational maturity using the Zero, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced (ZBIA) scale developed by Professor Martin Charter. The ZBIA framework evaluates the extent to which sustainability or circular economy principles are embedded within an organisation’s strategy and operations, ranging from Zero (no activity or awareness) through Basic (initial engagement and isolated initiatives), Intermediate (structured programmes and integration across functions), to Advanced (systemic adoption, innovation, and external leadership.

Table 5. Breakdown by sub-sector of those respondents rating their organisational maturity level as Intermediate or Advanced.

Sub-Sector	Sample Size	Number Responding Zero or Basic	Percentage Responding Zero or Basic	Number Responding Intermediate or Advanced	Percentage Responding Intermediate or Advanced
Advertising/Marketing	0	No Data	No Data	No Data	No Data
Architecture	4	3	75%	1	25%
Crafts	1	0	0%	1	100%
Design (Graphic, Product, Fashion)	6	2	33%	4	67%%
Film, TV, Video, Radio, and Photography	6	2	33%	4	67%
IT, Software and Computer Services (incl. Createch)	5	4	80%	1	20%
Music, Performing and Visual Arts (incl. Theatre and Dance)	10	4	30%	6	70%
Publishing	0	No Data	No Data	No Data	No Data
Other (Multi-Sector)	2	0	0%	2	50%
Total	34	15		19

shows the breakdown by sub-sector.

The low percentage of architecture respondents self-identifying as Intermediate or Advanced compared to most of the other sub-sectors seems to counter the academic and grey literature findings (which suggest greater maturity). One interpretation is that these survey results may reflect greater self-awareness in the architecture profession of the status quo in that sub-sector.

The technology sub-sector also scores low on maturity, and this suggests that the technology sub-sector is not following the same maturity trajectory as the other sub-sectors of the creative industries. A possible interpretation is that the technology sub-sector prioritises innovation speed and market disruption over CE concerns. In addition, the technology sub-sector faces rapid software and hardware obsolescence cycles and globalised supply chains, which create specific structural barriers to adopting CE practices, e.g., unrecognised build-up of e-waste combined with weak mechanisms for equipment recovery or resource recovery.

The open-ended responses in the survey provide an insight into niche-level activity. Responses highlight both the potential of niche CE innovations and the barriers to their adoption. Respondents shared examples of the reuse and repurposing of sets, props, and materials in film and television, and slow fashion models such as made-to-order production. Education and training for emerging creatives were seen as vital for embedding change from the ground up, while pan-industry collaboration, take-back schemes, and repair and refurbishment offer promising pathways for scaling circularity.

In contrast, respondents pointed to structural constraints such as time pressures in film, TV, and theatre production, the dominance of freelance and MSME workers with limited resources, and the lack of infrastructure for reuse and recycling. Cost and quality concerns, alongside client and customer resistance, also make it difficult for innovations to scale.

4. Discussion

This discussion returns to the research questions by examining how circular economy principles are interpreted and applied across the creative industries (RQ1); how the sector is positioned within national CE policy frameworks (RQ2); and how systemic drivers and responses are shaping the transition (RQ3). The findings show that, in relation to RQ1, circularity is primarily interpreted through downstream, material-centric strategies, resulting in uneven practice across sub-sectors. In relation to RQ2, national CE strategies overwhelmingly exclude the creative industries, limiting policy pressure and reinforcing the sector’s peripheral status. In relation to RQ3, the MLP analysis indicates a weak translation of landscape pressures into regime change, with niche innovations failing to scale. The validity of these findings is strengthened by the consistency of results across all four evidence strands. This convergence provides a justification for the results and reduces the likelihood that the observed trends are artefacts of a single research strand or dataset.

The following discussion uses the MLP lens to expand on these findings and clarify the implications for the sector’s circular transition. Figure 8 provides an umbrella perspective on the findings using the MLP framework.

4.1. The Landscape

At the landscape level, the forces acting on the creative industries are broadly consistent with those shaping other sectors. International agreements (e.g., the Paris Agreement, the UN SDGs, the European Circular Economy Action Plan) and wider debates on climate change, biodiversity loss, decarbonisation, and resource scarcity provide the same external pressure as for manufacturing or agriculture. Broad sustainability imperatives drive national CE strategies, such as the elimination of single-use plastics and reductions in construction and textile waste.

4.1.1. National CE Strategies Exclude the Creative Industries

Sector-specific programmes for the creative industries are rarely found in the national CE strategies analysed, indicating limited regulatory pressure on the sector. Also, given the trend in digitalisation and increased data intensity [84], one would expect links between CE policy, decarbonisation, and net zero commitments; yet, this connection is absent too. Instead, national strategies are framed predominantly in material terms focused on virgin resource dependency and visible waste streams, which directs regulatory attention toward extractive and high-waste industries (e.g., automotive, steel) rather than the creative industries.

This material-first orientation is reinforced by alignment with SDGs 12 and 13 and by global trade concerns over critical raw materials. It reflects a CE 1.0 paradigm that prioritises resource efficiency and waste management, while overlooking energy use, digital infrastructures, and carbon impacts associated with emerging creative-sector practices. As a result, digital-first sub-sectors (such as film, advertising, and gaming) are implicitly excluded, even though their environmental impact may be substantial across their extended supply chains.

Consequently, landscape pressures are only weakly translated into policy mechanisms across the sector. Without a more inclusive and digitally literate conception of circularity, less-material-intensive sub-sectors will remain marginalised in both CE policy and research.

4.1.2. Disruptive Socio-Technological Forces

The sector is experiencing disruption from a range of landscape socio-technological forces such as climate change, globalisation of creative supply chains, digitalisation and new technologies [85], changing audience expectations, shifts in demographics and social norms, and changes in employment. The grey literature shows that these pressures are actively discussed but not necessarily acted upon in terms of circularity. While some of these forces are actionable by the sector (e.g., changing media consumption patterns), others, especially AI, are developing so quickly by actors outside of the sector that the creative industries struggle to respond effectively (and not just in terms of circularity).

While multiple national CE strategies identify the potential benefits from digitalisation in general, they do not extend their CE policies to include reducing environmental harms from digital flows of data, services, and content that are at the core of so much of the creative work performed today.

Digitalisation is mentioned in 51 of the national CE strategies only as an enabler of circular transitions, e.g., the United Arab Emirates Circular Economy Policy 2021–2031 states “technology and digital revolution will play a vital role in the transition to a circular economy… and offer the potential to unleash many more circular economy opportunities.” However, the national CE strategies do not extend their CE policies to include reducing environmental harms from digital flows of data, services, and content that are at the core of so much of the creative work performed today.

The positive positioning of digitalisation (and Industry 4.0) in national CE strategies also contrasts with the grey literature (e.g., [17]), which shows a growing concern inside the creative industries that their digital flows are powered by energy-intensive infrastructure (and often by fossil fuels) and that digital content is driving physical consumption [86].

In particular, the combination of widespread generative AI use and digitalisation is acting as a multiplier for resource consumption [9,87]. In addition, this combination is accelerating energy and hardware usage in national and international infrastructures for data transmission, and these Scope 3 emissions are not being accounted for [88]. However, there is evidence that AI is also used to reduce energy consumption (e.g., intelligent energy management for theatres and arts venues) [89].

In addition to AI, the academic literature discusses the influence of a range of other Industry 4.0 technologies in the context of circularity [90]. The discourse focuses primarily on energy and emissions, but offers little guidance on how circularity should apply to digitalised creative production systems to counter increased electronic waste (e-waste) from data centres and end-user devices [91,92] (and associated pressure on critical materials in semiconductor manufacture [93]). Creative organisations are taking some limited steps in isolation to mitigate these impacts (e.g., establishing end-of-life plans for virtual production equipment), but the extended nature of digital supply chains requires coordinated action with adjacent sectors (e.g., electronic equipment suppliers, cloud infrastructure providers, data services). In turn, this requires supportive government policies to enable circular design, reuse, repair, and responsible end-of-life management at scale. From this research, progress to address these sources of resource consumption is slow and the technology sub-sector’s relatively low maturity and limited prioritisation of CE concerning.

4.1.3. Competing Global Narratives

Evidence from industry reports and policy documents in the grey literature shows that the dominant CE narrative in the creative industries is typically aligned with the UN SDGs. This alignment reflects the sector’s social and cultural orientation. Typically, non- binding initiatives such as The Creative Industries Pact for Sustainable Action (the Pact) [94] translate SDG principles into cultural-social guidance for the sector, promoting reuse, repair, low-carbon production, and community-centred approaches.

At the same time, the SDGs’ growing emphasis on digital technologies [95,96] legitimises technology-driven approaches that prioritise efficiency, scale, and platform growth. These competing narratives, cultural–social value versus technological–market value, complicate the transition from linear to circular models, particularly for MSMEs and freelancers who must navigate both expectations with limited resources and institutional support.

The market-led narrative primarily benefits large, well-capitalised organisations that can pursue the incorporation of circularity into organisational processes and products while scaling digital platforms, monetising data, and capturing investment through financial markets. These organisations are best-positioned to respond to national CE strategies that emphasise market mechanisms, innovation, and technological solutions, while freelancers and MSMEs may struggle to access the same opportunities or influence. While this narrative promotes innovations like digital product passports, blockchain traceability, and virtual production, this may be at the expense of labour practices and employment, perceived cultural value (e.g., generative AI vs. human artist), and social equity. It risks marginalising low-technology, place-based, or community-driven CE innovations that do not scale easily or generate market returns, and the literature of ecological modernisation contains warnings about overreliance on technology and markets to deliver sustainability goals [97,98].

4.1.4. Regulatory Vacuum

The creative industries have historically relied on self-regulation, often through voluntary pledges and codes of conduct [99]. Prominent examples such as the US Green Production Guide, BAFTA albert, and the Theatre Green Book incorporate elements of the CE within broader sustainability frameworks. These initiatives are gaining critical mass within their originating countries and, increasingly, are seeing international uptake; for example, the Theatre Green Book has now been translated into Japanese and Swedish, signalling growing global relevance. However, this paper uncovered mostly anecdotal evidence of effectiveness in terms of their contribution to circularity across the sector.

Other than architecture and, indirectly, product design (notably in the electronics industry), the creative industries are not subject to environmental regulation. While fashion (textiles and clothing) is increasing in priority for regulators (particularly in the European Union), key pieces of legislation will not be in force for some time. In comparison with other sectors, the lack of legislative drivers for the sector likely reduces the pressure for a transition towards circularity.

A smart approach to applying regulatory pressures in the creative industries requires a recognition of the diversity of sub-sectors and avoids one-size-fits-all mandates. This could involve an initial focus on material-intensive sub-sectors where rapid gains are possible (e.g., building on existing extended producer responsibility, EPR, regulations), while establishing enablers for digital-first ones (e.g., data transparency, platform standards). It is important to avoid imposing heavy burdens on freelancers and MSMEs, hence the need for staged timelines, thresholds, and exemptions (with large organisations and public broadcasters/studios leading).

4.1.5. In Summary

The preceding analysis explains why, despite strong, generic landscape pressures, RQ3 finds limited systemic uptake of the CE across the sector.

4.2. The Sector Regime

More than the CE, climate change remains a central preoccupation within the creative industries’ sectoral regime, shaping organisational strategies, funding priorities, and policy agendas. Its influence is reflected in environmental commitments and broad sustainability narratives, creating pressure for deeper structural change toward lower carbon and circular practices.

However, the sector regime’s adaptation is incremental and uneven, mostly driven by actors within the sector such as dominant institutions and purchasers of services and content rather than external policy mandates or international standards. Instead, voluntary industry standards and sub-sector-specific guidance (e.g., the Theatre Green Book, BAFTA albert) carry disproportionate influence because they often constitute the most practical and accessible reference points for practitioners in sub-sectors, but they lack the formal authority of legislation or international standards.

Hence, currently, regime-level rules, norms, and infrastructures in multiple sub-sectors remain largely stable and unaltered; there is little evidence of coordinated system-level change at the sector or sub-sector level. Instead, there is a partial, often ad hoc reconfiguration of practices to embrace CE principles, at least in a few sub-sectors. For example, selective circular practices are being bolted onto existing production models (e.g., establishing reuse schemes, material swap libraries, adding virtual production volumes to existing studios), rather than wholesale system replacement. These observations are consistent with the authors’ experience and prior research into general sustainability policy coverage, terminology use, sub-sector engagement, and the role of lead geographies [1,100].

Of course, it is possible that there may be less fragmentation of approach than the evidence suggests and, as one survey participant wrote, “the sector is learning about the circular economy and mostly embracing it”, although this research suggests that the sector has only recently recognised the relevance of the CE concept, and that widespread action has yet to happen. Also, there may be greater commonality between sub-sectors, but it is being masked by language choices and a lack of an accepted definition for CE in the creative industries. For example, survey respondents from technology-dependent or digital-first organisations scored the importance of the CE (as a concept) lower than others, yet also said that they are currently applying a range of R strategies in practice (e.g., data/energy reduction, server repurposing or reuse). Likewise, in the grey literature, discussions of virtual production, data centres, and streaming footprints are seldom framed explicitly as circular.

4.2.1. The Impact of Generative AI

Emerging technologies, specifically generative AI, are frequently mentioned as a key driver of regime disruption [101]. Generative AI systems (text-to-image, music, voice, code, 3D assets) are quickly diffusing across all sub-sectors, challenging long-held practices and creating new ones. The global generative AI for the creative industries market is forecasted to jump to USD 12.9 bn in 2029 (from $3.1 bn in 2025) at a 33% CAGR [102], and agencies such as WPP are already rebuilding their business models around these tools [103].

The potential for “dematerialisation” using generative AI (e.g., in virtual fashion) is often cited as a contributor to the CE. However, the life cycle claims of dematerialisation are no longer automatically synonymous with lower carbon footprints: a recent MIT study [9] highlights the sizeable and uneven carbon (and water) costs of training and using large generative models. Less well-researched in the creative industries are the CE implications of reuse, recycling, and repurposing of digital assets, large datasets, and AI models. For example, digital assets created for a particular game may be reused in other games, advertising shoots, and in film production.

4.2.2. Shared Opportunities for CE Between Sub-Sectors

From a CE perspective, the sum of the individual sub-sectors of the creative industries may not equate to a single, unified sector in the conventional sense. Rather, the creative industries are better understood by treating the sector as a set of overlapping and interdependent regimes or ecosystems [104], each with multiple shared opportunities to adopt circular principles. For example, advertising, marketing, and film and TV production all share studio spaces, hire costumes from the same suppliers, etc. The evidence of this research suggests that these shared opportunities are not yet being exploited.

4.2.3. Few Large CE Initiatives in the Sector

The variety of CE approaches described in the academic and grey literature further illustrate the fragmentation in the sector around the CE. While there are multiple examples of small-scale, practical, material-focused actions such as recycling, reuse, and waste reduction for individual sub-sectors, it is difficult to locate any broad-based initiatives aimed at transforming the entire sector. One reason for this is that there is little evidence of a universal set of drivers for circularity across all sub-sectors.

Rather than a coordinated shift in the sector, change appears to be happening incrementally through isolated initiatives and sub-sector-specific adaptations, most commonly in the parts of the sector that are more material-intensive (such as design, architecture, and fashion). Even where there is an obvious need for a common CE solution, initiatives in one sub-sector rarely extend to adjacent sub-sectors. For example, set storage schemes in theatre rarely extend to adjacent sub-sectors such as film. Moreover, lessons from other sectors seem slow to permeate the creative industries, and there are clusters of papers that discuss the reasons for this (e.g., cultural norms, dominance of freelancers and MSMEs with limited CE expertise).

4.2.4. CE Network Maturity

An important reason for the fragmented approach to CE in the sector is the low maturity of CE networks compared with other industries (for example, where industrial symbiosis is a key policy area). Figure 9 draws an analogy between networks for industrial symbiosis to support circularity (see Fric et al. [105]) and the current research. This supports the assertion that CE networks in the creative industries are a recent feature of the sector regime, and this echoes the findings of French and Charter [99] examining sustainability networks of various typologies. Hence, it is unclear from this research how far and fast the CE in the sector can progress without a more coordinated approach to knowledge exchange and cross-sector networking, i.e., current approaches lack systems thinking and rely on emerging networks.

4.2.5. Linear Models Persist

While the academic and grey literature identify stronger engagement with CE concepts at the regime level in architecture, design, and fashion, where existing standards, metrics, and material innovations are already embedded in professional practice and networks, there is a persistent reliance on linear models. There is progress, however. The literature reveals that more elements of the sector regime are coming under pressure from within to move away from linear practices, e.g., changes in sourcing practices, leadership behaviour in theatre management [106], and the criteria used by commissioners of design, architecture [107], advertising, and TV content. For example, in their Skills for Planet Blueprint, the UK’s Design Council prioritises “commissioner literacy” [108]. There are also references to the crucial role of dominant or “anchor” institutions (such as major broadcasters and streamers [109], architectural practices, creative agencies, and theatres) in promoting circularity metrics, life cycle assessments, and systems thinking.

Business leaders, creatives, and technicians in the sector continue to be slow to implement circularity. The grey sources in this paper show that there is organisational inertia in multiple sub-sectors, while Saha et al. [110] suggest that “insufficient proof of tangible benefits and awareness of how to implement it” are key factors, especially when Industry 4.0 is involved.

This research also highlights that researchers and business decision-makers may not recognise that commercial and aesthetic decisions create hidden “take-make-waste” linearities in virtual systems. For example, a decision to use virtual production in film/TV/game development to reduce costs by replacing physical sets and long-haul shoots with LED panels, real-time game-engine rendering, and remote collaboration. Pilot studies and industry carbon audits show potential emission cuts of 20–50% per project in film, TV, and advertising [10], mainly by slashing travel and set waste, but such studies typically ignore the CE implications of the hardware involved in the production volume (media servers, LED walls, camera and lighting rigs, etc.), much of which is subject to rapid obsolescence and replacement with the latest technology. While some large-scale second-life markets exist (e.g., for film cameras), they are often ad hoc and localised (e.g., selling or donating last-generation LED panels to further nearby education establishments).

4.2.6. Low Readiness for CE Regulation

The review of national strategies shows that, to date, the creative industries have only been targeted directly for CE regulation in a few countries and a limited number of sub-sectors. When asked about future drivers for circularity, however, survey respondents widely anticipate the introduction of regulatory compliance measures across the sector. This will be a significant change for most sub-sectors, and they appear ill-prepared. Despite government policy being identified as the most influential future driver across most sub-sectors, respondents showed only low-to-moderate awareness of existing CE regulations, and most were unaware of current and forthcoming standards that support those regulations.

One reason for the lack of preparedness is that creative industries possess limited clarity regarding the scope, timeline, or relevance of regulations to their specific domains as they have not been engaged with the development or shaping (or had to prepare or comply with) current or upcoming regulations (e.g., ecodesign frameworks, digital product passports) or standards (e.g., the horizontal standards such as ISO 59004). Based on qualitative comments from survey respondents and the grey literature sources, the sector is detecting indirectly the signs of a shift in the policy environment (e.g., via the media, self-study, consultant reports, blogs).

Regulatory compliance may prove challenging for the sector if is not engaged in the development process. Historically, the freelancers and micro-businesses that make up the bulk of the sector have been unwilling or unable to engage in creating policy, regulations, and standards. Similarly, compliance with regulations and standards is an administrative strain on smaller organisations and is, in many cases, counter-cultural.

4.2.7. In Summary

The preceding analysis reinforces the finding for RQ1 that circular practices remain incremental, uneven, and poorly coordinated in the sector.

4.3. Niche Innovations

The creative industries are experimenting with many small-scale niche CE innovations, such as circular fashion business models and platforms (e.g., secondary markets for materials and digital assets), modular theatre-set design, regenerative and bio-based materials in fashion [82], blockchain-enabled traceability of materials, and low-carbon virtual production for film and TV.

4.3.1. Lack of Institutional Support

Based on the analysis of the national CE strategies, these niches operate in a policy vacuum. There is little evidence of state-supported incubation or diffusion of circular practices specifically within creative MSMEs, even though these actors structurally dominate the sector and are often early adopters of sustainability practices. The fragmentation of the sector and the intangible nature of many of its outputs (e.g., digital, experiential, or narrative content) are one factor, and the reality that most creative MSMEs operate within short project cycles, thin capitalisation, and freelance labour markets also inhibits sustained research and development efforts and innovation diffusion. The result is a proliferation of niche practices. With few exceptions, niche CE practices have not yet challenged the way the sector operates in any substantive manner.

4.3.2. Data-Driven Innovation

Both academic and grey literature show that data-driven innovation is increasingly important [111], and the availability of “big data” from Industry 4.0 technologies and digital systems may not yet lead to large-scale, commercially viable CE solutions. However, having large volumes of data does not guarantee successful CE outcomes. Instead, success comes from the alignment between landscape forces (e.g., regulator pressure) and regime actors using data to innovate CE capabilities and then scale them [112]. However, De Albuquerque et al. [113] highlight that increased circulation of sustainability data in other sectors has not delivered on the “transformative role of data through its capacity to facilitate change in governance arrangements, to create and maintain new communication channels among stakeholders as well as to engage-specific social actors.”

Rahaman et al. [114] present research from other digital and data-intensive sectors (such as energy, financial services, and retail) that shows the range of data science capabilities required to extract measures such as CO2 emissions or economic value from environmental data, e.g., for assessment frameworks such as life cycle assessment (LCA or for predictive analytics and deep learning for better management of energy and other resources). Rahaman et al. also argue that while the techniques and technology for data analytics are important, so is data quality. Munodawafa et al. stress the importance of skill sets and human capital in exploiting data [115]. Both environmental data quality and widespread availability (and affordability) of people with appropriate skill sets are known issues in the creative industries.

4.3.3. Limited Understanding of Systemic Impacts

As new materials and technologies transform the sector, there is an incomplete understanding of the system-level impacts and implications. For example, niche innovations can create new environmental hotspots: new materials create fresh recycling challenges, AI data centres generate e-waste, consume energy, and deplete water tables for cooling AI. Addressing incremental resource efficiencies misses the way technologies, user practices, company cultures, audience preferences, national infrastructures, regulations, and standards need to co-evolve to deliver circular transitions even in individual parts of the creative industries.

For example, the virtual production studio or the generative AI visual effects pipeline only becomes circular when the whole production–consumption system is addressed:

• Power grids decarbonise.
• Data centre shells and mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) services are designed for disassembly, reuse, and eventual material reclamation (steel, aluminium, copper, concrete aggregates).
• Data centres divert their construction waste from landfill, reuse waste heat, use closed loop water or adiabatic cooling, and operate high volume hardware loops (i.e., repair, refurbish, and recycle servers and storage).
• Creatives shift their aesthetics and storytelling practices to embody CE principles.
• Technicians implement and maintain modular, repairable systems.
• Media servers and LED walls are designed for modular refurbishment.
• Asset libraries adopt open metadata standards for reuse/remix.
• Contractual, IP, and labour rules reward reuse rather than overproduction.
• Audiences value lower-impact digital experiences and circular narratives.

4.3.4. Barriers to Scaling Niche CE Innovations

While there is a range of niche CE innovations emerging across the creative industries, these remain experimental, localised, and uncoordinated. Their presence in specific sub-sectors signals creative energy and technical possibility, but their scaling and mainstreaming remains limited. The structural characteristics of the creative industries inhibit scaling. Project-based work, short production cycles, and high levels of freelance and micro-enterprise activity create strong incentives for experimentation, rapid prototyping, and niche innovation, but discourage diffusion and scale. Production ecologies are fragmented, supply chains are temporary, intellectual property is dispersed, and there are few stable institutions capable of embedding shared standards, infrastructures, or long-term investment. As a result, creative organisations often innovate “at the edge,” but lack the coordinated mechanisms, financing models, and system-level governance needed to translate promising ideas into sector-wide transformation.

To scale and disrupt the sector regime, niche innovations require targeted investment and support to move beyond early adoption. In the context of the creative industries, this scaling process is complex due to sectoral fragmentation, project-based work, and limited capital in MSMEs. Without support from governments, private sources of finance, and large organisations, promising CE innovations risk being stranded as one-off experiments rather than becoming integrated into industry practices.

Government support is critical in bridging this gap. National CE strategies are not addressing the wider ecosystem of knowledge exchange, infrastructure access, or regulatory incentives needed to accelerate scaling. A more enabling policy environment could include dedicated funding for scalable startups, procurement incentives, cross-sector partnerships, and integration with broader industrial strategy, particularly in geographies with strong creative clusters.

At the same time, larger companies in the creative industries (e.g., those that buy media, commission TV, or manage fashion brands) also have a key role to play in scaling innovation through their procurement power, supply chain reach, and visibility. By adopting and promoting circular practices (e.g., standardising reuse systems, investing in regenerative materials, or mandating circularity from suppliers), these firms can legitimise and normalise niche approaches, creating downstream demand and reducing the risk for smaller players to follow suit. Larger firms are also better positioned to invest in data infrastructure, certification, and compliance, which will be essential as circularity becomes increasingly embedded in policy (e.g., through ecodesign requirements or digital product passports).

While niche innovations in circularity are visible and diverse across the creative industries, their potential will remain under-realised without deliberate government intervention and leadership from dominant industry actors. Coordinated action is needed to move from one-off experiments to widespread change.

4.3.5. In Summary

The preceding discussion points directly address RQ3, showing why niche innovations do not destabilise the sector regime yet.

5. Limitations and Areas for Future Research

This study triangulates evidence from academic literature, national CE strategies, grey literature, and an exploratory online survey to assess how CE principles are interpreted and applied within the creative industries. While this multi-strand approach offers a rich, layered picture of the current landscape, several limitations remain.

5.1. Evidence Coverage and Representativeness

The online survey provided valuable practitioner insights but had a modest response rate and uneven sub-sector representation. Music and the performing and visual arts (including theatre) were comparatively well represented, whereas advertising, publishing, gaming, and live performance received few responses. Future studies using larger, stratified samples and sector-specific follow-ups would enhance empirical robustness and generalisability.

Also, the online survey did not ask specific questions about niche innovations. Further surveys, case studies, or interview-based research could explore this important area more thoroughly.

5.2. The Creative Industries vs. Cultural Economy

Future research could extend beyond the creative industries to encompass the wider cultural economy. Such an approach would allow for the examination of not only additional economic domains but also of how communication, storytelling, and media practices contribute to public awareness, behaviour change, and engagement with CE principles.

5.3. Bibliometric and Conceptual Mapping Gaps

Although the literature review was broad and thematically structured, bibliometric analysis of CE-related research in creative sub-sectors was constrained by lack of access to full citation and reference data (e.g., via SCOPUS). This limited the ability to model co-authorship, citation networks, and topic evolution over time. Future research should incorporate database-level citation analytics and semantic clustering to map the conceptual contours of the CE in the creative industries more systematically.

5.4. Policy Text Scope and Language Limitations

The review of national circular economy (CE) strategies was limited to publicly available government documents published in English, accompanied by official translations, or where machine translation was deemed of acceptable quality. The use of machine translation, however, may have led to the omission of important nuances or details. By focusing on national-level strategies, city- or regional-level documents were not captured. Expanding the dataset to include national cultural policies, such as those produced by the French Ministry of Culture, would enhance the completeness and contextual depth of the policy analysis.

5.5. CE Implications of Technology

This research identified knowledge gaps related to the growing use of various Industry 4.0 technologies in the sector. This area remains under-theorised in research and is not yet visible in policy. Future work should explore how CE frameworks apply to intangible assets, digital workflows, and dematerialised value chains in multiple sub-sectors, including life cycle thinking for data, cloud infrastructure, and digital assets.

A key need is for research to develop a new scalar that redefines the sector as a spectrum from fully material to fully dematerialised (and mixtures), integrating the emergence of digital production and distribution in the creative industries as an important aspect of circularity (e.g., data centres, cloud platforms).

6. Conclusions

This paper has offered a reality check on the circular transition of the creative industries. Despite frequent sustainability claims, concrete circular practices remain fragmented and uneven across sub-sectors. The MLP highlights this disconnect: global pressures such as climate policy, resource scarcity, and digitalisation shape the landscape, yet have not translated into targeted national CE strategies for this sector. Within the regime, established norms and fragmented structures slow adaptation, while niche innovations (e.g., regenerative materials, modular sets, virtual production, reuse platforms) remain isolated between sub-sectors and lack pathways to scale.

This research shows that bridging these gaps requires deliberate support mechanisms that connect niche experimentation with mainstream practice through policy incentives, procurement frameworks, and shared infrastructures enabling MSMEs and freelancers to participate as easily as larger institutions. The sector’s hybrid material–digital nature makes it vital for CE and net zero strategies to address both domains together.

Overall, the circular economy in the creative industries is still emergent, with few ‘hard’ drivers such as regulation, and with practices in need of systemic redesign. Downstream, tangible actions (e.g., recycling, reuse of costumes and sets, modular set design) are prioritised, while upstream and systemic strategies are rarely discussed or implemented. In practice, there are many knowledge gaps that need academic–industry collaborations to close.

This immaturity in the sector is matched by the absence of the creative industries in current national CE strategies. This represents a significant oversight, particularly given the socio-technological changes underway and the need to scale niche CE innovations. Also, this omission underplays the capacity of the creative industries to shape CE narratives, influence consumer values, and promote sustainable lifestyles at a national level.

6.1. Potential Policy Responses

Relevant national (and local) policy responses are key to a more orchestrated approach to the CE in the creative industries. However, as this research shows, that is typically not happening. Scarcity of sector-wide research, gaps in understanding of impact, and a lack of coordinated action by industry incumbents may also contribute to national CE strategies overlooking the sector. For example, in the UK, the creative industries have been identified as one of eight key sectors in the government’s Industrial Strategy, but the creative industries sector is not one of the six sectors within England’s CE taskforce.

Hence, the starting point for policy development is the explicit inclusion of the creative industries within national CE strategies. This inclusion should be grounded in a scientific justification, such as the sector’s capacity to operate within planetary boundaries, rather than based solely on its contribution to economic growth or the public good [116]. Policies should acknowledge both the material and digital footprints of the sector and recognise its potential to align production and consumption with ecological limits. This entails addressing the environmental impacts of design, fashion, media, and digital technologies, while harnessing creative innovation to drive behavioural and systemic change. Achieving this will require targeted research to close evidential gaps, particularly regarding material footprints in material-intensive sub-sectors and the energy impacts of digital-first activities.

6.1.1. Introduce Cluster-Level CE Policies

Policies that create creative cluster-level CE governance are suited to the sector’s clustered geographies and networked production systems (e.g., local reuse hubs, materials exchanges). Such policies could support existing creative clusters through shared infrastructure, digital asset reuse, and low-carbon energy systems. For example, most existing national CE strategies already include industrial symbiosis recommendations, and these could be adapted for the creative industries through symbiotic networks, whether material (e.g., reuse hubs, eco-studios) or digital (e.g., asset libraries, data platforms).

To improve data availability about impact, policymakers could require cluster partnerships to report on material and digital resource-sharing.

Cluster policies could also establish intermediary platforms between local government, creative businesses, and universities to coordinate material innovation, data, and knowledge exchange.

6.1.2. Plan Specialised Industrial Parks and Shared Facilities

Policymakers could adapt the eco-industrial park concept for creative production, i.e., specialised industrial parks and production facilities near renewable energy sources and material-recycling hubs based on Kalundborg-type models [79,117]. This would enable further clustering of media producers, suppliers, equipment rental, data centres, and recycling firms in one spatial zone, reducing transport emissions and transaction costs associated with CE.

At a national or regional level, this idea could be taken further to establish Creative Symbiosis Zones (CSZs) where planning or enterprise-zone designations are used to attract sustainable creative infrastructure, modelled on eco-industrial park incentives. In urban settings, policymakers could use urban planning and regeneration instruments as requirements for resource-sharing and low-carbon design in creative district zoning.

6.1.3. Enable Long-Term Investment in Circular Creative Ecosystems

Mirroring what is proposed in some national CE Strategies to accelerate the CE transition for other sectors, public funding could be used for joint infrastructure (energy networks, shared equipment, material libraries) and research partnerships between creative organisations and universities.

Creating targeted support for scaling niche innovations should also be a priority. Policymakers could establish funding streams or public procurement incentives that reward circular practices in creative contracts and public cultural investment and encourage national R&D programmes that connect creative MSMEs with universities to incubate and scale CE innovations.

Also, CE tax credits or reduced business rates could be offered for creative companies that share assets or operate in designated industrial parks or zones.

6.1.4. Support Sector-Specific Standards and Capacity Building

Policymakers could co-develop creative industry-specific guidance documents that translate horizontal CE standards into sector-relevant language and case studies. They could also encourage current industry frameworks (e.g., Theatre Green Book, BAFTA albert) to evolve into formalised, recognised standards that can be embedded into national CE strategies and regulations. Similarly, standards bodies could embrace the CE for the verticals in the creative industries, as well as more generally for the sector (this is already happening in fashion, but not elsewhere).

Policymakers could also fund training and capacity building programmes for freelancers and MSMEs in standards-related areas like CE compliance.

6.1.5. Facilitate “Digital Symbiosis” for the Creative Industries

Policies could be introduced that address the combination of material digital resource flows, i.e., explicitly including data centres, digital production pipelines, and creative technology hardware (e.g., servers, media servers, LED volumes, and consumer devices). This could involve extending ecodesign and extended producer responsibility (EPR) frameworks to cover creative technology equipment and supporting sector-specific metrics and tools to measure energy, e-waste, and resource intensity of digital creative production.

Also, just as material flows in industrial symbiosis depend on transparency and trust between supply chain partners, digital circularity depends on data-sharing frameworks and platform governance. National agencies could develop sector-specific interoperable data and metadata standards for reuse (e.g., 3D assets, visual effects libraries), potentially aligning with legislation such as the EU Data Act and DPPs. This could be extended to the funding of online marketplaces for digital assets, datasets, render capacity, and materials (analogous to industrial symbiosis material exchanges).

6.2. Final Thoughts

In conclusion, the CE potential of the creative industries remains largely untapped and requires stronger policy recognition, alongside targeted research to support and scale emerging circular practices across the diverse sub-sectors.