Native wildlife carers often work on a tight budget, drawing on all the help they can get to nurse animals back to health. Now, medical supplies that were headed to landfill are instead being used to help smooth the road to recovery.
00:00Meet Sunny. He's found himself in the trusted hands of Gippsland wildlife carer Sue Moore
00:10after his mother was injured in the wild.
00:13I've had 80 koalas come in in 12 months and approximately about 350 animals come through the shelter as well.
00:22It's a round-the-clock job for Sue who's had a lot of mouths to feed over her 20 years as a carer.
00:29But it's been made easier with the help of donations of old medical equipment, including swabs, bandages and a humidity crib.
00:38I had a big koala that lost its temperature, so we were able to put it into the humidity crib and brought back that temperature back up.
00:46And then if I have young babies, like furless babies, I can put them in there and it keeps that temperature.
00:52It was out-of-date equipment destined for landfill, a waste recognised by a charity called Medical Pantry.
01:00We sit in between donors who have too many medical supplies and then recipients who are in desperate need of medical supplies.
01:08As well as helping animals like these koalas here, the reuse of medical equipment is also helping the environment.
01:15The healthcare system is the second largest contributor to the nation's landfill, accounting for 7% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
01:24So at the moment we're only saving about 5% of what is actually going to landfill that can be redistributed and we want to be able to do that better.
01:33Sue is hopeful Sunny will continue to build up his strength and eventually be released back into the wild.
01:40When you open it up and then climbing up the trees, it's a reward really because that's what you've done, you've saved it.
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