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What are the barriers to sunscreen use today? What does “clean” mean? Should chemical formulations be phased out in favour of mineral? The suncare industry is growing fast, and brands are grappling with some big questions that could shape its future.
The global suncare market grew by 7 per cent to $2.7 billion in 2022 — outstripping much of the rest of the beauty industry, according to Kantar data recently shared with Vogue Business. Experts say a key driver of that growth is the widening array of options available for consumers, offering cleaner ingredients and addressing some of the issues that have deterred people from using sunscreen in the past, such as an unpleasant texture or leaving a stinging sensation. Competition, from both existing and new entrants, is increasingly fierce.
The category is expanding far beyond the household names of summers past. Brands such as Iris Romeo, Ilia, Kosas, Kinship and cult favourite Saint Jane, among others, have come out with sunscreens that avoid red-flag ingredients, use more natural alternatives and offer additional skincare benefits — from mattifying to anti-aging. “Consumers are getting smarter. Retailers are getting smarter. Brands are getting smarter, especially the newer brands, in how they’re formulating,” says Homer Swei, who leads the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG)’s Healthy Living Science programme.
A challenge for all suncare brands is the consumer shift towards “clean” products. It’s part of a larger transformation in beauty and skincare generally, but sunscreen has a particularly muddled ingredient safety record. Two key ingredients traditionally used in sunscreen — oxybenzone and octinoxate — have come under intense fire not only because of potential health impacts, including cancer and endocrine disruption, but also because they have been found to be especially damaging to coral reefs. Concerns about marine ecosystem impacts have driven places such as Key West and Hawaii to ban these ingredients. While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to allow their use (and is in the process of evaluating some concerns), the US sunscreen market has largely moved away from them.
There are other ingredients that researchers would like to see studied more closely or used more sparingly, though they are clear that, whatever the outcome, the benefits of sunscreen are unequivocal. The real question about sunscreen safety isn’t whether or not to use it, but rather which particular sunscreen to use. For brands, this means offering a wider range of choices.
“Skin cancer affects one in five people [in the US]. That s a staggering statistic when you think about it. The most important thing is the sunscreen that someone will wear. In order to do that, you need to have options,” says Amanda Baldwin, CEO of sunscreen and SPF skincare brand Supergoop. “Our end goal, as a brand, is to get everyone on this planet to wear sunscreen every single day. There’s no way you can do that with one single formula.”
Mineral vs chemical sunscreens
Sunscreens fall into two broad categories: mineral formulations, which work by physically shielding the skin from UV rays, and chemical formulations, which penetrate the skin and react with the UV rays in such a way that reduces their potential for damage. Mineral sunscreen ingredients have been proven safe, whereas the primary chemical sunscreen ingredients in the US have not been studied enough to determine conclusively whether or not they are safe.
Both, however, are effective at sun protection — meaning either type of sunscreen is categorically better than none at all.
The lack of certainty around chemical sunscreen ingredients is enough for some to want to steer clear of them, which is one reason why mineral sunscreens have been gaining market share. Formulators have also figured out how to make them more user-friendly, leaving less of a white cast. Chemical sunscreens have long dominated the market, but — amid today’s seemingly insatiable demand for more natural ingredients — some of the biggest brands, from cult favourite Supergoop to mainstream giants Banana Boat and Coppertone, now offer mineral-based formulas (the main active ingredients in mineral sunscreens are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide).
Demand for sustainable-oriented products — from vegan or plastic-free products to “clean” formulas, which can mean just about anything but tends to refer to mineral sunscreens as well as chemical sunscreens formulated without oxybenzone or a roster of other undesirable additives — is driving growth in the global suncare products market, which is projected to climb from $13.85 billion in 2023 to $17.19 billion in 2027, according to online research platform Research and Markets.
New York-based retailer Credo Beauty, which screens products according to an internal set of environmental and health standards, only sells mineral sunscreens and avoids chemical formulas entirely. “The Credo customer trusts the products we carry have been verified against our Dirty List [of banned ingredients] and understands we’ve done the research on the backend with the brands to ensure any product we carry at Credo is clean by our stringent standards, which go far beyond a restricted substance list,” says assistant merchant Gabriella Ramirez.
The retailer is able to maintain that policy and still have an abundance of products to sell precisely because brands are coming up with more ways to make mineral sunscreens attractive to a wider range of customers, she says. Chemical sunscreens are hardly obsolete, however. “I typically see it coming down to personal preference. One type isn’t better than the other and I think the performance of the product is most important,” says Sephora beauty director Myiesha Sewell.
Many mineral formulas still also leave a white cast on the skin, making them off-putting for people with darker skin. “You cannot create a fully inclusive line if you are using mineral sunscreens because if you have a darker skin tone — you can’t create a clear product, so you inherently are excluding certain people from using sunscreens. You also have people who are allergic to mineral sunscreens, and they are not going to sit well on the skin if you are doing high levels of sport,” says Baldwin.
At Supergoop, she says the priority is on developing formulas that are effective and user-friendly. The brand’s main mission is to eliminate barriers to sunscreen use and to get everyone to wear it every day. “Unseen Sunscreen is our hero SKU. It’s the sunscreen that changed the entire conversation, because of the way we [developed it]. We actually made a list of things that people don’t like about sunscreen and started crossing them off, and said how do we create a product that addresses all of those? That’s always what will guide us — thinking about how we can break down those barriers,” says Baldwin. She says the company avoids ingredients that are known to be problematic, although she recognises that what people think of as “clean” is changing all the time, in part because the body of research into the impacts of specific ingredients and ingredient mixtures is always expanding and adapting. “The definition of clean is an ever-evolving term. Our first formula is going into its eight, ninth iteration because we’re looking constantly at the sunscreen filters that are available,” she says.
Keeping it simple
Only 25 per cent of sunscreen products on the market offer broad-spectrum protection without “troublesome” ingredients, according to EWG’s latest sunscreen report, which ranks sunscreens by the health and safety of ingredients and formulations, as well as their efficacy in protecting against the sun. “The [Food and Drug Administration] says nothing about the other ingredients. There are no standards for those other types of ingredients,” says EWG’s Swei.
While there are no hard and fast rules for choosing products for safety, he says one general guideline could be to stick to relatively simple options. Sprays and mousse formulas, for instance, are thought to be more problematic thanks to particle inhalation and the use of questionable ingredients — including PFAS, or “forever chemicals” — among other issues. “The more complex the formulation, we do have to worry about other considerations. The foam probably has something in it that makes it foam. The same with the spray,” he says.
Baldwin says Supergoop’s growth — “across every single SKU” — is an indication that the market is making a dent in the larger problem of people not wearing sunscreen at all. “What we’re most excited about is that people are saying, ‘you know what? I really should wear sunscreen, how do I figure out which one is right for me?’” she says. “The most important thing people can do this summer is wear sunscreen — and reapply.”
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