An introduction to GROUNDTRUTH GLOBAL

With the very recent events around the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced a global emergency situation in real-time.

Although it is not as clearly visible as the health crisis, we are facing an emergency on an even bigger scale: the climate crisis.

As more and more customers demand climate-friendly production, companies acknowledge the importance of change to stay relevant.

The fashion industry as we know it is the second-largest polluting industry (right after the oil industry -  how crazy is this?), contributing about 10% of global greenhouse gasses, the UN reports. These current stats are caused by the use of harmful fibres and chemicals, carbon-intensive fabrication and overproduction. 

However there is already change in sight, most big players of the luxury sector already announced sustainability plans, while fast fashion companies are also claiming to take action on this immense import topic.

Prada Group, for instance, introduced their Re-Nylon range last winter, also stating they will only use regenerated nylon by the end of 2021, with fast fashion powerhouse H&M introducing a green line utilising ecological cotton.

Acknowledging the activists and organizations that accuse this sort of actionism as greenwashing, we need to understand that the business model of fast fashion is one root of the current harmful situation. By producing way over the actual need of the customers, the industry supplies about 4 times more clothes than is actually needed, thus 85% percent of textiles end up on landfills senselessly.

With more and more brands being open to making changes within their supply chains, the last decade has brought up a good amount of young brands facing the challenges the industry as a whole doesn’t want to see. Thinking of the problems and challenges we need to face at this given point in time, a new landscape of future-driven and ethically-produced fashion is already here and the new generation of makers and innovators are both very promising and putting the planet first.

One company that refuses to follow the industry rules, by deciding to do the right thing from the start and change the industry from within is GROUNDTRUTH GLOBAL. Founded in 2017 by the three sisters Georgia, Nina and Sophia Scott, the brand specialises in sustainable travel gear made out of 100% recycled plastic waste collected from landfill, waterways and oceans worldwide.

Being trained documentary filmmakers the Scott’s travelled around the globe capturing various climate and humanitarian emergency situations such as wars, hunger and the melting of the Antarctic.

By bridging the versatility of bags that will both perform at a business meeting and an expedition in the wilderness, both situations the brand’s founders found themselves in, the Scott’s managed to find a very simple but design-forward language that puts the function in the front.

The base of GROUNDTRUTH’s first collection, the RIKR-range is a material made out of 100% recycled PET bottles and plastic waste that took the brand about 2 years to develop. The jacquard is as innovative as it gets, combining three layers of recycled synthetic fibres that built the extreme resilient GT-RK-001, as they named it.

Working with bluesign®-approved manufacturers, Groundtruth has also partnered with REDD+ Conservation Company Wildlife Works to guarantee emission-free production and offset the carbon footprint of the company’s travel emissions.

A waterproof range is in the planning and will arrive in spring 2021 but the Scott Sisters are already onto new ideas, developing new materials and looking for new solutions to provide the best imaginable protection of the many many conditions our planet has to offer.

Let’s talk with GROUNDTRUTH!

Hello Georgia, Nina and Sophia - can you please introduce yourselves to the Sabukaru network!

Sophia - As the eldest of the three sisters, I have been making films for the past 15 years and set up GROUNDTRUTH Productions 7 years ago with Georgia to make longer format cinematic documentaries that tell human stories. I started my career in Africa when I moved there aged 21 as a recent film graduate. I filmed everything from capturing the prevention of child brides in Nigeria to following the efforts of combating the use of child soldiers in Somalia, to the destruction that drought has on the local population and environment.

I have done intensive investigative filmmaking my whole career and I am now applying that knowledge to GROUNDTRUTH. I hope that with our current design company, I can start effecting meaningful change within the fashion and apparel industry which has a long history of polluting our natural world. I am a total backpack fanatic and test all our bags out in the field for durability and function. I love people and the planet but believe we need to be far more connected to ensure a sustainable future for both.  

The Scott Sisters Georgia, Sophia and Nina (from left to right)

Georgia -Three years ago, this month, GROUNDTRUTH was born - but the concept and drive behind it has been in the making for over a decade. I have worked in a diverse range of roles spanning the breadth of the creative industry – from project management within a global design firm to the making of in depth feature documentary films with GroundTruth Productions, embedding myself in communities and environments around the world.

I have a deep-rooted determination and drive to form creative ideas in business, innovation and design and to see them evolve and thrive. The diverse range of skills that my two sisters and I bring together has enabled us to create a company that is founded on in-depth research, passion for design and creative exploration. I am excited when I look at our path ahead - from pushing the boundaries within the world of material innovation to our technical design philosophy that we are continuing to build. 

Nina - My experience and passion lies in artisan textiles and product development and management. I worked alongside an award winning lighting designer as head crocheter and studio manager, developing new innovative ways of forming shape by a simple bamboo crochet hook.

I have always had a strong research-driven approach - focusing on sustainable products, innovative fabrics and design. Having worked closely with natural and organic fibres, I am now focussed on developing recycled materials from environmentally damaging waste such as plastic and algae and to continuing to conduct research into emerging technologies and sustainability within the textile sector.  Back in 2017 when Georgia and Sophia approached me to join them on this journey making unique, sustainable and technical travel gear - it was a complete no brainer for me to jump onboard and join the team. Collaboration is where my passion lies, working together to find solutions for sustainable manufacturing is essential and I hope it is where GROUNDTRUTH can take the lead within the industry. 

Although you are trained documentary filmmakers you decided to enter the field of fashion and outerwear in 2017. That’s quite a big shift if you look at it from an outside perspective. What was the initial motivation to set up GROUNDTRUTH?

Sophia - As filmmakers always on the move, we never had the right backpack to carry our camera kit from smart city meetings, onto planes and out into the field in some remote part of the world. We wanted a bag that could transit with us between our different lifestyles. With so much of our work as filmmakers spent filming on rubbish dumps being witness to massive amounts of plastics filtering into the sea, we wanted to try and clean some of this up. We really wanted to set up a business that could help clean up some of the mess we humans generate but create a beautiful and useful product with that waste. We hope to prove that it’s possible to build and run a super sustainable company that does not add pollution to our planet. 

We have created formulas and have calculated that our current range of bags have removed 480,000 plastic bottles from the environment to date. 

Considering there are one million plastic drinking bottles purchased every minute globally, and in total we produce 300 million tons of plastic waste a year, we have a lot of work to do.  

Georgia - We founded GROUNDTRUTH with a commitment to protect our natural environment and at the same time to protect the people who make the products. We wanted to actively play a part in changing the fashion industry from within - to innovate new eco friendly materials created from waste and to build a new and more sustainable way of working. I am sure we have a lot to learn yet - but to us it is vital to establish strong and responsible foundations. The environment is at the heart of GROUNDTRUTH but design is at our core. The foundations of our design ethos is functionality and technology - we trial and test every product for style, function and our newly innovated materials and components.

From what we could gather you specialised on documentaries that take a deeper look at humanitarian and climate emergency situations. How did you manage to translate your urge of storytelling into clothes?

Georgia - Having spent years making films about people living in extraordinarily difficult situations, often fleeing war, we have witnessed first hand the hardships facing life of refugees. It came to our attention that sometime in the  near future the number of people fleeing climate change will outnumber the people fleeing war. Climate change is real and it is happening all around us. Our planet is changing and it is changing in an unnatural way. With GROUNDTRUTH, we have a purpose, a goal and a plan to achieve a better world.

Sophia - I really believe in the power of the moving image to inspire and create positive behaviour change. For Georgia, Nina  and I it was important to have the stories of the people behind the manufacturing of our bags tell their story, when there is a real face and voice people tend to listen more, and in the fashion industry where so many garments are made with no accountability or transparency of supply chain, we have chosen to film every step involved in the creation of our bags. We hope to use our films to capture our aim of leaving no negative footprint on this planet.

Can you give us an idea what each step in the production process looks like? From collecting the raw materials to the manufacturing.

Nina - It started with finding our perfect manufacturing partners, we knew we needed a manufacturer that was transparent and had the same ethos as us. After traveling to various countries meeting face to face potential partners we finally found the perfect one, based in Indonesia.

Then it was sourcing the recycled plastic bottles, because we wanted to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible so we looked at what was near to our factory. We found a great recycling plant that collected plastic from oceans, water ways, landfills and would import from other countries - so the plastic truly comes from all over the world.

This recycling plant receives on average 2000 tons of plastic bottles per week, these bottles get cleaned and chipped then sent to Taiwan where it’s made into yarn. The fabric supplier in Taiwan is bluesign® approved and they also produce fabric for Patagonia so we knew that the quality and sustainability would be what we would need and what we were looking for. Then the final step is that the fabric is sent back to our bluesign® approved manufacturers in Indonesia where our technical travel gear gets sewn and finalised. 

Georgia - We only work with manufacturers who are bluesign® approved, a leading system which encourages the textile industry to increase their efforts in sustainable processes and provides a safer and more sustainable environment for people to live and work in. 

Working with the specialist textile mill in Taiwan we created our high-performance GT-RK-001 textile, manufactured from 100% recycled PET, using plastic waste collected from landfill sites, waterways and oceans worldwide. With a 600 denier ballistic yarn structure for premium strength, a unique triangular ripstop weave, and a water-repellant TPU coating, it offers unparalleled durability and resistance to the elements. We’re proud that each RIKR backpack removes 120 plastic bottles from our environment. 

We read that your packaging is 100% biodegradable. Is using biodegradable materials for clothes and fashion also an approach that you could imagine?

Nina - There is so much incredible innovation happening in the textile industry, from lab-grown spider silk to cellulose, I would not be surprised if biodegradable clothing was the next big trend! 

But you do have to be careful when choosing biodegradable material as some need very specific conditionals to start decomposing. If they don't have these conditions, i.e sun and oxygen then they release a greenhouse gas, methane which is very harmful for the environment. With all of our packaging we have chosen Cassava root which starts to decompose within 2 months, this is faster than other biodegradable materials, you can recycle it with your regular recycling or even put it in your compost at home. 

With the goal to create humanitarian working conditions and zero environmental impact, you did not choose the easiest terms for a young brand. What has been the biggest challenge you have had to face on your way?

Nina - The RIKR range was field tested by our brand ambassador, polar explorer Rob Swan in one of the world's harshest environments, Antarctica. So we knew from the beginning that we needed to develop our own fabric that could survive in these extreme conditions to prove that reuseded material can be just as high performing than virgin material. One of the biggest challenges was getting our bespoke GT-RK-001 material correct, we went through 6 different prototypes before getting the thickness and weave perfect. 

Georgia - One of our biggest challenges was to get all elements on the bag to be made from 100% recycled material, but we stuck to our vision. It has also been far more costly than we anticipated, at every turn our costs were higher doing it the sustainable way, but the more companies adopt the same principles the more the costs can come down for recycled materials, especially the zero plastic approach we have - so there needs to be affordable alternatives. It’s also about changing the consumer's mindset, that we all have to pay a little more for a product to ensure it does not have a damaging environmental footprint. 

Innovation takes a huge roll for every sustainable brand at this time, as we are still in the learning phase of what it means to re-use and recycle fibres and PET-waste for instance. How do you see this industry branch 10 years from now?

Sophia - We know what it takes to film in some of the harshest places in the world. You need reliable, durable, high-performance equipment - but in 2020, there is no point in having the right gear if it doesn’t make sense for our planet.

By forging progressive new ways of working, we aim to act as a catalyst for global conversation, bridging industries to spark change for the better. From business travel to production to material manufacturing, we offset all our carbon with The Mai Ndombe REDD+ project, located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which protects over 740k acres of the world’s second-largest rainforest. We calculated how much CO2 was emitted during the production of our first range and how much CO2 we generated from traveling and have offset the 120 tons. These are the kind of absolutes that have to be adopted and I believe that in 10 years we will look back at what the manufacturing industry has been like and how polluting it was. I think with COVID-19 people are waking up to how much we need to safeguard the natural environment to ensure our own survival. 

Nina - The global COVID crisis has highlighted the huge impact that the fashion industry has on humans and the planet. Brands have become so cost-effective at scale that they would rather over-manufacture by 30 to 40 per cent than risk running out of stock, and most of this will end up in landfills or be burned. The world can’t survive these conditions so the future of fashion has to change, this change starts with changing the mindset of the industry leaders. Reduce, reuse and recycle to form a circular economy.

There are already such incredible innovative materials out there, in 10 years time we should solely be using sustainable fabrics such as recycled yarns, natural fibres, vegan leathers and without using any harmful chemicals.

Most products that are sold at the moment aren’t designed to last at all. In fact, the common selling strategy is putting items on the market that are designed to fail by time to be eventually replaced. In contrast your bags have a 15 year warranty to them. Why is durability a key to your work?

Sophia - Durability is vital for us. Our whole ethos at GROUNDTRUTH is to try and tread carefully on this planet and not add to waste. Our bags are designed to last so that they don’t end up in landfill. We encourage our customers to buy sensibly, and believe in safeguarding the Earth's finite resources. We hope to be part of consumer behaviour change and foster meaningful dialogue around buying responsibility and getting people away from the habit of fast fashion which is just not sustainable at all. 

We prepare to live on a planet that will outdo it’s previous extreme weather records each year. What does this mean for the process of creating durable gear?

Georgia - We take our field testing to the next level. In extreme environments you get to see how your materials or your design features really truly work - that is why we take our time during the field testing period and find the environments where we can push our products. We hope we have provided a bag range that can journey with you anywhere, in any environment. Buying products that are durable and designed to last is a really important part of how people can actively help protect our planet. 

Your range consists of various bag and backpack models, that look like they were designed for general usage. However, for the polar explorer Robert Swan, you manufactured special gear for an expedition to the Antarctic, that you accompanied him with. Can we expect you producing more actual performance gear in the future?

Sophia - It was important for us to put our products through rigorous testing, this included expeditions to the South Pole to test especially our bespoke GT-RK-001 material made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. Rob Swan took our 24L backpack to the geographic south pole on his recent expedition where he was testing renewable forms of fuel. We custom designed 4 sledge covers for Rob and his team, these were created from our recycled ripstop material and stood up to the -40C temperatures. Our aim at GROUNDTRUTH is to design products that can work in both the city and the extreme environments of our world, but we are open to designing pure performance gear if it fits into our story of environmental protection.

One of our favorites designs and products from your range is the RIKR 15L Technical Tote. Can you please tell us more about this particular design and your understanding of functionality and technical fashion through a GROUNDTRUTH lens?

Nina - We also love the Technical Tote, it’s so lightweight and versatile. Our design philosophy comes from what is needed on the ground, function before esthetics. Market research is vital, from the fabric to the functions we believe that research is how you can learn what is needed to start the design process. Once we have the first prototype that's when the true designing starts, what is missing or not needed and how can we make it more adaptable to any environment, any situation. We love field testing all of our products, it is such a key stage in development and being able to move forward. Function is how we achieved a product that seamlessly transitions from any situation, for example the side semi-detachable straps that can be used for your tripod or yoga mat that can be super easily hidden away if you need the bag to be more minimal and smart. Also designing one product that can transform into 3 different carry options, the RIKR Tech Tote is a true hybrid.

The material has been chosen for its quality and performance, ensuring that our products are as refined and resilient as much as they are sustainable.

We are constantly exploring new technologies and materials to incorporate into our range, so we remain at the forefront of innovation.

A classic ending: What is next for GROUNDTRUTH, when and where might we see your products entering a physical space and store?

Sophia - We are currently designing our second range scheduled to be released in Spring 2021, it will be the ultimate waterproof range. We are working on some very innovative materials, so this bag will be very futuristic. The environmental story attached to this range is all about deforestation and the need to protect the forests and wildlife, these bags will be tried and tested in Borneo highlighting important work of local conservationists. This story will resonate especially now with COVID-19 and knowing that the encroachment of human activities into the delicate ecosystem gives rise to infectious diseases. We will be launching in retail stores globally from towards the end of this year so please follow us and look out for our brand. 

Georgia - One of our key objectives is that our GROUNDTRUTH products never end up in landfill. We use all of the offcuts from our manufacturing to create our smaller items such as the RIKR card holder. We are in the process of setting up regional projects where old backpacks are donated to community projects for disadvantaged school children to use. In every aspect of business we strive to be truly climate positive - for us this is a long-term objective and a journey that keeps on going. We hope to continue to build GROUNDTRUTH as a global sustainable brand and as a trusted company in the advancement of materials created from polluting substances.

Thank You a lot for your timE

About the author:

Juri Marian Gross is a photographer and writer based in Nuremberg, Germany. His work focuses on sustainability and environmentalism within fashion and arts.