Solid waste and its associated environmental, health and wellbeing impacts and resource and land availability are becoming increasingly challenging to manage in remote and isolated communities. This is primarily due to the lack of infrastructure, land availability, high collection cost, poor economies of scale and low environmental awareness. This paper seeks to understand the factors that contribute to this solid waste management challenge and that hinder more sustainable management in a remote community context, through a systematic and critical literature review. 265 scientific articles and industry and government reports were collected and reviewed from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google search from 2011 to 2021. Barriers and enablers were synthesised and critically reviewed using a systematic literature review approach following the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework. The review identified a lack of waste collection and recycling infrastructure, increasing trade and local economic development, low environmental awareness with respect to impacts of consumer waste products and disposal, and limited access to funding as the major drivers for the current unsustainable waste problem in remote communities. Notable impacts literature identified include water pollution (including marine environments), land pollution, and air pollution. Six categories of responses reported in the literature are: 1) technological improvements, 2) waste avoidance and reduction, 3) reuse and recycle, 4) increase government support, 5) inter-organisation partnership, and 6) innovative solutions to create value from waste. This paper informs policy makers on existing problems and potential circular economy approaches to achieve greater sustainability in this area. The paper also provides recommendations on a future research agenda to achieve such changes on the ground.