Recent publicity in national newspapers about the dangers of keeping your make-up too long has reaffirmed the contribution that Timestrips® can make to greater well-being amongst consumers.

A new study by the College of Optometrists has shown that one in four women in Britain are using eye make-up more than four years old. Nearly two-thirds of the women surveyed said they continued to use their mascara for longer than two years, and a whopping 92% keep their eye make-up longer than the industry-recommended six months. “Mascara is a breeding ground for bacteria,” says a worried Dr Susan Blakeney, Optometric Adviser to the College of Optometrists. “When women are holding on to their make-up for so long, it’s not surprising that nearly half of them suffer from itchy, watery and red eyes. The irony is that eye infections are not a pretty sight!”

Timestrips® help protect the consumer by giving an easily visible sign of how long a product has been open or in use. British women spend £1 billion a year on cosmetics, more than any of their European neighbours, which would suggest there is quite a lot of make-up in the average woman’s bathroom! Keeping track of how long each individual item has been in use is quite a tall order. Fortunately, Timestrips® make it easy. The inexpensive labels contain a tinted liquid which, when the label is activated, moves across it at a consistent rate, allowing accurate monitoring of elapsed time. Labels can be produced to monitor anything from a few minutes up to twelve months and beyond, so there’s plenty of scope to ensure that the chances of picking up eye irritations are minimised.

European regulations now require cosmetics manufacturers to display on product packaging how long the product may be safely applied once in use (the Period after Opening). The open cream jar symbol used by most is a good indicator of how long a product will perform at its optimum level. But the danger is that it goes unnoticed and, significantly, it can’t tell the consumer when the product was opened in the first place. Timestrip® can.

The Timestrip team is already working with market-leading cosmetics manufacturer Strand Cosmetics Europe on integrating Timestrip® labels into the company’s packaging. Incorporating a label into the product packaging will enable Strand not only to ensure compliance with current legislation, but also to offer its customers a real, tangible benefit integrated into the make-up they purchase.

Reuben Isbitsky, Timestrip’s Joint CEO, is keen to push home the message about eye health: “Timestrips® are smart but also extremely simple: they’re inexpensive for manufacturers to add and easy for consumers to use. It’s so easy to keep your eyes healthy and avoid those nasty infections, just by getting into the habit of using Timestrips® on your cosmetics. It’s even easier when the labels are built into the packaging, so the more manufacturers that start integrating Timestrips® into product packaging, the greater the benefits to women’s health.”

Strand Cosmetics Europe works with high-end, international cosmetics brand names across Europe, America, Asia.