Medical waste destined for landfill diverted to wildlife charities in Victoria
Sonny the koala joey is being looked after by wildlife carer Sue Moore. (ABC News: Danielle Pope)
Sue Moore has been working as a wildlife carer in Tarwin Lower, in Victoria's south-east, for 20 years.
It is a round-the-clock job, rehabilitating koalas, echidnas, reptiles, and even birds of prey like eagles.
"I suppose the difficult part is, it's full-time, getting up in the middle of the night, feeding them and all that sort of stuff," she said.
"When you have a lot of orphans come in, you've got to keep them fed every four hours."
Her latest patient is a small male koala joey named Sonny, who found himself in Ms Moore's care after his mother was injured in the wild.
Looking after orphan koala joey Sonny is a round-the-clock job for Sue Moore. (ABC News: Danielle Pope)
"He's a little terror, so at night-time around about three o'clock, he starts making these noises and I've got to get up," Ms Moore said
"I have a dressing gown, so he climbs on my dressing [gown]."
It is a job she loves that has been made easier through the donation of old medical equipment that would otherwise have gone to waste.
A charity called the Medical Pantry has given Ms Moore's shelter swabs, bandages and even an incubator, which would have been used to help pre-term babies in the neo-natal unit at Melbourne's Mercy Health.
"I had a big koala that lost its temperature. We were able to put it into the humidicrib and bring its temperature back up," she said.
"If I have young … furless babies, I can keep them in there and that keeps their temperature even."
Sue Moore is able to help injured animals with this donated humidicrib from Medical Pantry. (ABC News: Danielle Pope)
Saving lives and the environment
Martin Nguyen was working as an anaesthetist 10 years ago, when a standard equipment audit with a fellow doctor highlighted a big problem.
"We did a waste audit of everything coming out of theatre and we catalogued everything, and just like a war on waste, we found there was a lot of unused medical supplies in there," he said.
Dr Nguyen was also working as a volunteer overseas at the time, doing cataract surgery, and noticed the disparity between medical supplies was stark.
"These communities overseas were in desperate need, so when it first started, I was collecting these supplies, putting them in my backpack and going overseas and distributing them,"he said.
From that idea stemmed the charity now known as Medical Pantry, founded by Dr Nguyen.
The charity works to connect suppliers of unused medical equipment, and supplies that are no longer fit for purpose, with those who need them.
Martin Nguyen founded Medical Pantry. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
The charity now has more than 130 partners nationally and internationally, and supports humanitarian causes and wildlife shelters.
"What they do is they'll go online, just like an eBay where everything is free," Dr Nguyen said.
"They can pick and choose exactly the supplies that they need, and then we ship it to them and it's all for free."
On the volunteer line, nurse Lisa Harriet has been helping prepare Medical Pantry packages.
She works as a neonatal nurse at Mercy Health, which has just donated 10 neonatal incubators to the charity to send to wildlife clinics across the state.
"It's really nice to see that something that's helped these babies along their journey … and basically to survive … be given a second life and be used for something else," Ms Harriet said.
Lisa Harriet volunteers at Medical Pantry, helping pack items for delivery. (ABC News: Peter Drought)
War on waste
According to a 2018 study published in The Lancet medical journal, the healthcare system is the second-largest contributor to the nation's landfill, accounting for seven per cent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr Nguyen said this was due to the high standards of required by the health system.
"We have a healthcare system that is top-notch, that is on demand," he said.
"And the fact that it's on demand means that we need to stockpile and that stockpiling leads to waste."
Dr Nguyen said limited storage capacity also meant that warehouses often had to clear what was on the shelf to make space for new supplies.
"That typically would normally go to landfill, but with the Medical Pantry, we're able to save that," he said.
The charity has donated 15,000 tonnes of medical supplies — worth about $200 million — from its first warehouse in Yarraville, but wants to do more.
"At the moment we're only saving about 5 per cent of what is actually going to landfill that can be redistributed, and we want to be able to do that better by resourcing the charity," Dr Nguyen said.