BIN rounds in Bury have been given a huge shake-up, with 20,000 households facing a new collection day.

Bury Council bosses are to introduce new routes for rubbish and recycling collection from Tuesday.

It is the first major change to collection routes for eight years and the first since kerbside recycling was introduced.

About one-quarter of the borough’s 82,000 homes will have a different day of collection.

The new routes are part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions by cutting down on fuel usage, make better use of the collection vehicles and to extend recycling opportunities into rural areas.

But a union leader claims there will be fewer wagons on the road and that crews could face pressure to complete their rounds in the allocated time.

The frequency of collections will not change, but the time of day they take place will. Many of the collections that currently take place in the afternoon will move to earlier in the day and some of those that currently take place in the morning will move to the afternoon.

New calendars are being delivered to all households ahead of the new routes being brought in. These tell residents which bins and bags will be collected each week for the next 12 months and give an up-to-date list of what items can and cannot be recycled.

Separate leaflets are being distributed to households where there is a change to the collection day.

To avoid missing a collection, residents are being reminded that bins and bags must always be put out by 7am on collection day.

Glenn Stuart, head of waste management, said: “We are doing everything we can in readiness for making these changes. To prepare, the crews are making sure they are up to speed by familiarising themselves with the new, more effective routes.

“We have also put plans in place to make sure that if a collection is missed when the new routes are introduced, we will return and carry out the collection the following day.”

Steve Morton, Bury Unison trade union secretary, said the local authority had recently dispensed with temporary agency workers. He is concerned the new arrangements will put significant pressure on remaining council collection staff.

He added: “There is going to be a reduction in the number of vehicles. And obviously, for those who are going out, there will be more bins per waggon to be emptied.”

Mr Morton said crews could go right “down to the wire” to finish their collections on time.

“At this stage, it is hard to determine exactly what will happen, but we will be keeping a watch,” he said.

The changes follow a borough-wide review of waste collection arrangements, which has taken account of issues such as the working patterns of waste collection crews, the numbers of bags or bins put out for collection and the ease of collection from different types of properties. All results were analysed and new routes modelled, selected and checked by staff from the council’s waste management service.

Collection dates and the latest advice about bin and bag collections is available at bury.gov.uk/binandbag collections or from the customer contact team on 0161 253 5353.

Online reporting of problems is available 24 hours a day at bury.gov.uk/ reportaproblem as is advice from Bury Council information line on 0161 253 5555.