Bury empties the grey rubbish bin once every three weeks and the free brown food and garden bin every two. Bank holiday and Christmas dates explained.
Two things about Bury’s bins catch people out, and neither is on the front of the council’s website. The grey rubbish bin is emptied once every three weeks, not weekly or fortnightly. And the brown bin takes food waste as well as garden waste, every two weeks, all year, with nothing to pay and nothing to subscribe to.
This page pulls together what Bury Council splits across ten separate URLs. Every figure here comes from the council’s own pages or its own collection-date service, checked on 26 August 2026.
The quick answer
- Four bins. Grey for rubbish, blue for glass, cans and plastic, green for paper and card, brown for food and garden waste.
- Grey, blue and green are three-weekly. Brown is fortnightly.
- There is no garden waste subscription in Bury. The brown bin is free to have emptied.
- Bins out by 7am, lids fully closed.
- Report a missed bin after 5pm on the day, and before 1pm the next day.
- Bulky collection is £49 for up to five items, or £24.50 for one collection a year if you get Council Tax support.
- Both tips are open every day of the year except 25 December and 1 January.
Which bin is which, and how often
Bury runs four wheeled bins. The council’s bins information pages set out what each one takes.
| Bin | What goes in | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Grey | Rubbish you cannot recycle: plastic packaging and packets, tissues, wet wipes, and nappies, pet waste and sanitary products in tied bags | Every three weeks |
| Blue | Glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, food and drink cans, empty aerosols, clean foil | Every three weeks |
| Green | Clean paper and clean cardboard only | Every three weeks |
| Brown | Garden waste and food waste, including raw and cooked meat, fish, bones, and dairy | Every two weeks |
The three-weekly grey bin is the one to plan around. The council is blunt that it must not be overloaded and that the lid has to shut, and a three-week gap is a long time to get that wrong.
Three local traps are worth knowing:
- Hard plastics do not go in the blue bin. Toys, plant pots, coat hangers and toothbrushes are all refused, as are carrier bags, food wrappings, film, pet food pouches and crisp packets. The blue bin page wants bottles, pots, tubs and trays washed, rinsed and squashed.
- The green bin is paper and card only, and it has to be clean. It is not a general recycling bin.
- Batteries and mobile phones must not go in any bin, which is the council’s own instruction on the blue bin page.
The brown bin is the unusual one. In most of the country garden waste is a paid subscription running to well over £100 a year. In Bury it is free, fortnightly and takes food waste too. What it will not take is packaging, plastic bags, liquids such as fruit juice or milk, large wooden logs, plant pots or cooking oil. You can only have one brown bin per property, and the council does not accept requests for a second.
Finding your collection day
Bury does not publish printed calendars. The only authoritative answer is the council’s own bin collection days and alerts service. Enter your postcode, pick your address, and it returns your next collection for each bin plus a twelve-month calendar. You can also sign up there for email reminders.
Rounds run Monday to Friday and are spread unevenly across the borough. Of 199 Bury addresses checked against the council’s service on 26 August 2026, Wednesday and Friday were the commonest collection days and Monday the rarest, on 23 of them.
Bank holidays
Collections in Bury run through bank holidays. The council’s own service lists Monday 31 August 2026 as a collection day for 22 of the 23 Monday-round addresses checked, and every calendar checked runs its three-week or two-week cycle straight through with no gap at any bank holiday in the next twelve months.
The council publishes no bank holiday page at all, which is why this is worth stating plainly. It is also why the exception below matters.
Christmas and New Year
Christmas is the one time Bury does move collections, and the twelve-month calendar does not yet show it. Of the 199 addresses checked, 61 currently list Friday 25 December 2026 as a collection day and 58 list Friday 1 January 2027. Those are the unadjusted rota running on. The council amends them in December.
Last year it announced the changes on 19 December 2025, and the pattern was:
- collections due on 23, 24 and 25 December moved one day earlier
- the collection due on 26 December moved to 29 December
- 30 and 31 December were unchanged
- collections due on 1 and 2 January moved to 2 and 3 January
- brown bins were suspended entirely from 22 December to 4 January
Councillor Alan Quinn, cabinet member for environment and climate change, warned in the same release that the council “cannot rule out snow and ice or winter illness impacting our workforce”. If a collection is missed over the festive period, the council’s advice is to leave the bin out.
Check the lookup again in mid-December rather than relying on the calendar it shows you today.
Missed collections
The window is narrow. The council’s missed bin page says to wait until after 5pm on your collection day, then report it before 1pm the following day. What happens next depends on the bin:
- Blue, green or grey: the council delivers official bags to use until the next scheduled collection. It does not come back for the bin.
- Brown: collected within five working days.
- Assisted collections: resumed within three working days.
It will not accept a report if the bin was not out by 7am, if the lid would not close, or if it held the wrong items. It also asks you not to report it if several bins in your street were missed, because the round is already known about.
Putting bins out
The council’s bin collection advice asks for bins out by 7am with handles facing the road and lids fully closed. Where they go depends on the house: non-terraced properties present at the front, terraced properties at the back. If you are new to a street, the council’s own suggestion is to copy the neighbours.
Bulky waste
A bulky collection costs £49 for up to five items. If you receive Council Tax support you can book one collection a year for £24.50.
The item count is where bookings go wrong. A double wardrobe counts as four items, a double mattress as two, and a corner sofa as five, so a single sofa uses the whole booking. The council will not take fitted wardrobes, fitted kitchens, sheds, fence panels, mirrors, large ladders, gas bottles or pianos.
Items must be at your usual bin point, in the front garden or on the driveway. Crews do not go into back gardens, sheds or houses. Soft furnishings need to be dry and covered. There is no refund if you cancel, if the items are not there, or if you put out fewer than you booked.
Replacement and extra bins
Bins are paid for in advance and priced to push you towards recycling. A grey rubbish bin costs £46; blue, brown and green recycling bins are £17.50 each. Moving into a new build gets you a free set of four, ordered by phone on 0161 253 5353, though the developer may have done it already.
An extra grey bin is not simply ordered. The council asks for a utility bill, a benefit letter confirming how many children live there, a bank statement or phone bill for each adult, and evidence that you already recycle what you can. It may audit your waste at the property. Additional grey bins are given red lids and reviewed annually.
The tips
Both household waste and recycling centres are open seven days a week, 8am to 8pm in summer and 8am to 6pm in winter, and close only on 25 December and 1 January:
- Bury, Every Street, BL9 5BE
- Radcliffe, Cemetery Road, M26 4FT
No booking is needed and cars need no permit, but there are limits. Cars and cars with a single axle trailer get 52 visits a year. Cars with a double axle trailer, and all vans, pick-ups, estate vans, city vans and chassis vans, get 18, and vans, hire vans, pick-ups and twin axle trailers need a permit. The Bury site has a 2 metre height barrier, so anything taller has to use the weighbridge on site.
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