Expanded polystyrene waste circularity: Scientific, regulatory and corporate evidence-map dataset (2017–2026)

This dataset supports the scoping review entitled "Expanded Polystyrene Waste Circularity Across Recycling Technologies, Policy Instruments, and Corporate Practice: A Scoping Review", prepared for submission to Materials Today Sustainability. The dataset integrates the characterization and documentary coding of 146 scientific publications, 30 selected legislative and regulatory instruments, and 12 corporate cases. Two EUMEPS reports provide additional sectoral context, including European expanded polystyrene (EPS) waste-flow estimates. The accompanying Excel workbook contains study-level bibliographic and analytical records, circular economy strategies, lifecycle-stage classifications, technical and material-performance indicators, regulatory and corporate evidence, figure-related tabulations, operational coding definitions, and methodological audit information. The scientific literature was identified primarily through Scopus, with an initial filtered screening set of 889 records covering the 2017–2026 search window. The final characterized corpus contains 146 publications from 2018–2026. The review uses non-mutually exclusive documentary coding for circular economy strategies and lifecycle stages. The dataset supports reproducibility of descriptive frequencies and cross-source comparisons. Reported percentages reflect the characteristics of the selected documentary evidence and should not be interpreted as independently verified recycling rates, policy effectiveness, or corporate material-flow performance. Methodological limitations, including incomplete historical traceability for 12 excluded full-text assessments, differences in source availability, and the contextual inclusion of selected foam and insulation studies, are documented in the supporting files. The deposited material consists of author-generated secondary research data and methodological documentation. Copyright-protected publisher full texts and proprietary Scopus exports are not redistributed.