10 More Everyday Beauty Items To Stop Buying Now

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Here’s why they’re a waste of money — and what to pick up instead.

#1: High SPF Sunscreen

For years I blindly shelled out the extra few bucks every few months for a fresh tube of the higher SPF version of my favorite sunscreen. And while the high recurring cost annoyed me, I justified it by telling myself that it was a necessary evil to keep my pale skin protected. But this assumption demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of how sunscreen works. And my ignorance on the topic had cost me quite a bit over time. So after doing a bit of research, here’s what I found.

UV light, which sunscreen offers protection from, is divided into UVA and UVB rays. According to the Mayo Clinic, UVA rays cause premature aging while UVB rays cause sunburns. But since both UVA and UVB rays can cause skin cancer, a broad spectrum sunscreen, or one that provides both UVA and UVB protection, should be applied daily. And although we need protection from both UVA and UVB rays, the SPF, or sun protection factor, only refers to the protection offered by that product against UVB rays.

Further, I was shocked to discover that a higher SPF does not provide proportionally better UVB protection. In other words, applying an SPF 100 sunscreen does not provide double the protection of an SPF 50. And according to…