# Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka

Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka is Komar’s Chief Sustainability Officer, working on sustainability across the apparel brand’s global value chain. Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka’s public posts discuss practical ways to reduce supply-chain emissions, energy and water use, and waste.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/thiwanka-de-fonseka/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-thiwanka-de-fonseka-b8248479
- LinkedIn followers: 7,910
- Topics: supply-chain, scope-3-emissions
- Based on 23 dated posts, latest 2026-10-07

## Summary

Use Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka to connect factory-level energy, water and waste improvements with apparel sourcing and supplier decisions.

- Best for: An apparel brand or consultancy assessing supply-chain decarbonization and factory energy-efficiency work.
- Not for: A consumer-facing campaign, product launch or effort to drive shopper purchases.
- Check first: Confirm audience demographics, engagement results for comparable posts and any commercial partnership format.

### Takeaways

- Correcting a dyeing batch repeats its water, chemical and energy use.
- Cut avoidable energy demand before sizing costly electrification investments.
- Sourcing decisions should weigh carbon performance alongside cost, quality, capacity and lead time.

## Main ideas

- **Cut wasted energy before funding bigger equipment**: They argue that factories should reduce avoidable energy demand before investing in solar, heat pumps or electrified boilers. Efficiency can lower emissions now and shrink the size and cost of later investments, particularly for manufacturers with limited capital.
- **Brands can enable supplier decarbonization through how they buy**: Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka argues that supplier transition is not simply a question of who pays for equipment. Predictable orders, longer relationships, better forecasting and technical support can help suppliers invest. They say brands’ contributions should reflect their purchasing volume, influence and capacity, and that sourcing should reward suppliers’ climate performance.
- **Efficiency figures need to be checked against total impact**: They warn that lower impact per garment does not necessarily mean lower overall emissions or water use: production growth can outweigh efficiency gains. They add that the watershed matters, because equal volumes can have very different consequences in places with different levels of water stress.
- **Look beyond material claims to the whole value chain**: Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka’s posts broaden sustainability beyond preferred fibers and circular products to design, manufacturing processes and supplier capability. They draw attention to operational measures that broad targets can miss, and to the need to report setbacks as well as progress.

## Work to read

- [Are We Electrifying Waste? Why Efficiency Must Come Before Costly Decarbonization](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-thiwanka-de-fonseka-b8248479_are-we-electrifying-waste-why-efficiency-activity-7500036748115136512-sKmd)
- [The Sustainability Metric Hiding in Plain Sight: Right First Time Dyeing](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-thiwanka-de-fonseka-b8248479_the-sustainability-metric-hiding-in-plain-activity-7502614667358507008-Y-kW)
- [Decarbonizing the apparel value chain is not simply a question of who pays](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-thiwanka-de-fonseka-b8248479_decarbonizing-the-apparel-value-chain-is-activity-7506206020579520512-k9A5)

## Brand relationships

- **Komar** (employment)
- **Star Garments Group** (mention)
- **Zero Gravity** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Cascale** (mention)

## Partnerships

The posts do not identify any commercial partnership, sponsorship or affiliate formats for Dr. Thiwanka De Fonseka. They publish as Komar's Chief Sustainability Officer, not as an independent media property selling placements; no rate card, sponsored-content policy, audience specification or booking route is published. Their visible activity instead centers on unpaid, association-organised professional engagement and supplier-facing programmes—distinct from a paid partnership offer. They appear as a panel speaker at industry events, including two sessions at the Cascale Annual Meeting 2026 in Athens: one on preparing leaders for value-chain transformation and one on who pays for decarbonization and fair cost sharing. Their own year-end summary also lists speaking engagements at the Worldly customer forum, the Oeko-Tex Summit and the SustainableNXT conference. Separately, Komar runs supplier-facing capability programmes they describe publicly, including a supplier sustainability learning management system covering climate action, water stewardship, energy efficiency, sustainable materials, chemical management, waste, biodiversity, traceability and regulatory readiness. The platform is free to Komar suppliers and is not open to the public; it is a company programme, not a partnership product. A buyer cannot build a plan around an off-the-shelf creator partnership based on the published posts: they identify no sponsored-placement, co-branded-content or affiliate format, nor an official inquiry route for partnership or sponsorship requests. Before committing budget, ask whether such an offer exists and how to make an inquiry. The review covered their own posts; an offer could exist on a separate company or agency page.

## Alternatives

- Oliver Hurrey: Consider Oliver if the apparel decarbonization engagement needs to start with supplier feedback and procurement behavior. In a post describing feedback from more than 500 suppliers, Oliver identifies concrete obstacles: sustainability losing out to price in contract awards, customer specifications shaping supplier emissions, duplicated reporting, limited supplier capacity, and short-term tenders. Oliver’s work offers a stronger starting point for a buyer workshop on aligning requests and commercial incentives with supplier needs.
- Bernhard Heinrich: Consider Bernhard if the need shifts toward connecting decarbonization with supply-chain resilience and product risk. Bernhard’s posts frame carbon data alongside energy prices, trade, regulation, supplier availability, materials and geography, and argue that companies should connect those factors earlier in product and sourcing decisions. That perspective could help a brand make the business case for decarbonization to leaders focused on cost, competitiveness and resilience.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/