Viridor will invest £160m in the design, build, finance and operate contract with Glasgow City Council and has signed up Interserve to construct recycling and energy from waste plants as part of the deal.
The contract, which is subject to building approval, requires the treatment of up to 200,000 tonnes per annum of waste and is designed to achieve around 90% landfill diversion.
Viridor expects to secure planning consent by early 2013 to allow construction work to start that summer.
By 2016, when the plants are expected to come on stream, Viridor expects to have around 1.8m tonnes of thermal treatment capacity and over 250MW of renewable energy capacity.
The GRREC will generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 20,000 households and heat the equivalent of 8,000 homes from the non-recyclable waste that remains.