My mother’s husband is a street sweeper. He works for Veolia.
Where he works (outer London, let’s say) there are a number of different crews. Street sweepers (that also empty high street bins, etc) the bin truck crews, large item collectors, etc.
Nobody has been issued any PPE, and of course they are all handling potentially hazardous waste. At the end of last week he got in to work and turned up to find all of the bin truck crew being sent home for the foreseeable and the street sweep crews are being trained up to work the bin trucks.
So, the only reason I can see got this is that as the bin truck crews are on a higher rate that the government will pick up the 80% of the higher rate from Veolia, whilst they continue to pay the lower rate to the schmucks who are now working the bin trucks they have been rushed in to fill. Social distancing? Well, they have to cram three in the little cab up front to get to the route, so none of that. Haven’t even been given gloves.
So assuming Veolia will try to do this across the UK (they are responsible for the vast majority of the UKs bin collections) they are using this to the advantage of paying lower wages to desperate people in awful conditions, and even if you’re not concerned about those people then your bin collection might end up messed up as nobody knows what they are doing.
I guess sensible advice is to wear dedicated rubber gloves when you retrieve bin and bleach & water the outside, then wash the gloves thoroughly outside, then hands when you take them off.