Fromwastewe grow.

Thomas founded ORU Collective after seeing first-hand the scale of Sri Lanka’s waste problem. The country generates around 9,000 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste every day, with disposal and methane emissions from waste remaining a significant challenge.

After visiting landfill and disposal sites, and then speaking with hotels across the South Coast from Galle to Matara, Thomas saw the same issue repeatedly: every property had a different system, segregation was inconsistent, and even carefully separated materials could still end up in landfill or mixed disposal.

For Thomas, that did not sit comfortably with the reality of Sri Lanka’s South Coast, one of the country’s most beautiful and important tourism regions.

ORU was created to help change that. The ambition is to work with leading hotels, villas and restaurants to build a practical recovery network that keeps useful materials in circulation and, over time, enables organic waste to be converted into products such as compost and biogas that can be returned to local businesses and communities.

Before founding ORU, Thomas worked in international commercial insurance with some of the world’s largest insurers and businesses. That experience gave him a practical grounding in risk, complex operations, client relationships and building solutions across multiple stakeholders, skills he now brings to developing ORU’s collection network, partnerships and long-term circular-economy model.

Himali brings specialist expertise in sustainability, solid waste management and ESG to ORU Collective, strengthening ORU’s ability to help hospitality businesses move beyond collection and recovery towards measurable environmental improvement.

She holds a Master’s degree in Sustainability and Solid Waste Management from the University of Central Lancashire and is a qualified GSTC auditor, bringing recognised expertise in sustainable tourism and waste management to ORU’s hospitality-focused model.

With more than 15 years of international experience, Himali supports ORU and its hospitality partners through waste audits, sustainability assessments, staff training, circular-economy planning, ESG guidance and certification readiness.

At ORU, she helps translate operational data from ORU Collect and ORU Insight into practical action, identifying opportunities to reduce waste, improve internal systems and progress towards recognised sustainability standards.

Her technical and strategic expertise complements ORU’s operational and commercial capabilities, allowing ORU to combine practical resource recovery with credible sustainability guidance.