Swansea's landfill site is going to close early next year, a cabinet member said.
Councillor Mark Thomas said the county's black bag waste would be sent to an energy-from-waste facility once Tir John, Port Tennant, stops accepting any more rubbish.
He told a council scrutiny panel that the authority was finalising a contract with an energy-from-waste facility outside of Swansea.
"It's still going through the legal processes," he said.
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Energy-from-waste plants burn rubbish and produce electricity.
Cllr Thomas said Tir John would close in February. Work to cap it and restore it will continue for a couple of years, and a solar farm will be built on part of it.
Once the new system is up and running, refuse lorries will deposit our black bag waste at the Llansamlet baling plant. Larger lorries will then haul it to the energy-from-waste facility out of county.
Councillors on the panel asked about the cost and environmental impacts of transporting waste away from Swansea and opting for the energy-from-waste route.
A senior council officer said there would be some additional environmental impacts but that these would be more than offset by the end of landfilling.
Panel members also heard the energy-from-waste method would be cheaper in the long run, once Tir John had been restored.
More details will be announced once the contract is finalised and a three-year waste strategy for Swansea is published in January. A small percentage of waste from Swansea is already dispatched to an energy-from-waste incinerator.
Cllr Thomas said the Welsh Government would, as of 2025, not allow councils to landfill more than 5% of non-recyclable waste.
More than 35,000 tonnes of black bag rubbish from homes and business served by the council was landfilled in Swansea in 2020-21. The figure has come down as recycling rates have grown.
The council recycled and composted 64.5% of household and business waste last year, which put it 17th out of Wales's 22 local authority areas.
But Cllr Thomas said councils which sent black bag rubbish to energy-from-waste facilities boosted their recycling figure by around 5% because they could claim the residual ash as a recyclable product.
The average household in Swansea generated 221kg of black bag waste in 2020-21, less than the 264kg Wales average.
Councils in Wales will need to hit a 70% recycling figure by 2024-25.
Refuse lorries are likely to collect a greater range of waste products, possibly small electrical items and batteries, in Swansea in the coming years.
Councillor Peter Black said he was keen that Tetra Pak cartons could be picked up from the kerbside.
He said he saved his cartons up and took them to a household waste recycling site every six months.
"A lot of people just put them in their black bag," he said.
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