OLD COSMETICS
REPORTER: JACKIE QUIST.
They're the old favourites we simply cant bear to part with -- our ancient cosmetics like expensive friends. We stretch out mascaras, scrape out eye shadows, hang on to lipsticks.
Young mums Adriana McCormack and Maribel Flores are as guilty as most of us. "If you pay good money for them, you do want to make sure you get good use out of it", said Maribel.
The true cost is invisible to the naked eye but what lurks in those old containers, can make your skin crawl. "They literally become a breeding ground. You're actually putting something on your face that is possibly contaminated", said Associate Professor Dr Peter Dingle, a researcher at Murdoch University.
Professor Dingle claims hanging onto beauty can be dangerous. "Every time you're going to be reapplying your cosmetics you're going to be reapplying at least some dose of bacteria and if its been breeding there a long enough time and there's enough moisture, you're probably getting a fairly good dose", he said.
Mum of three Sharon Zakic admits she spends so much on her three children there's little left to invest in cosmetics. " The mascara seems to go a bit gloggy, so I keep putting it back in the drawer and then the lipstick seems to be fine but the eye shadows go a bit -- make my eyes a bit funny every now
and then, so I stop using those too and they get put back in the drawer", Sharon said.
"Most products will last between 12 and 24 months and I think it's very important to flick old products, because you don't want to get disease and you don't want to share with anyone else, because you can get conjunctivitis", said celebrity hair and make-up artist George Giavis.
George helped uncover the murky truth when assisting Westfield with a recent national survey of mums. "We found that 41% of women actually kept their make up for five years, they were still using make up that they actually had for five years, 77% of women were actually still using make up that they've actually had for two years and 16% of women were still using make up they'd actually had for ten years", George said.
But we do keep adding to these collections. Cosmetics house Napoleon Perdis estimated women are spending an average $1,100 a year on cosmetics alone - that's $92 a month.
Still these costs can be cut using some simple tricks of the trade. "You can use something as versatile as a blush, which is one product you can use for your cheeks, your eyes, your lips and then you can team that off with a lovely lip gloss", said Napoleon make-up artist Rialyn Deveza.
Railyn says you can usually tell when a product has reached the end of its life. "It doesn't smell very appealing. Mascara really goes dry and clumpy and realistically, you can't even get it to apply. Lipstick tends to get really, really hard", she added.
Mascara should be discarded after 6 months,
Skincare such as cleansers - 12 months,
Liquid foundation and concealer binned after 12 months,
Powders, blushers and eye shadow, 18 months,
Eyeliner and lipliner tossed after 18 months and
Lipstick is good only for about 2 years.
"You have to make sure that they are stored in a dry area, that there's no moisture in them, that they're covered up -- that they're not kept in a nice warm place that becomes a breeding ground", Professor Dingle said.