Hawaiian Tropics Mineral Sun Milk SPF 30 review: sunscreen for our running workouts.

The Top Line:

Overall, Hawaiian Tropics Mineral Sun Milk with SPF 30 is a buy. While it does leave a bit of a white cast, the texture is liquid (‘milky’) and more easily spreadable compared to other products we’ve tried. Additionally, the Hawaiian Tropics is at the cheaper end, competing with Pipette in terms of cost.

A note from TRR: April is Earth Month. Here at TRR, we plan to bring you a few more mineral and reef-friendly sunscreens in the coming months as we are finally hitting warmer weather here in the northern hemisphere! As always, drop us a note if you have products that you would like to see reviewed!

The Breakdown:

• Cost & Products: $11.99 for 3.4 fl oz SPF 30 at Amazon

• How ‘Clean’ Is This? Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide are the active ingredients. While there are a ton of multi-letter chemical words, they are generally deemed safe. However, the sunscreen does contain Fragrance.

• Packaging: Most sunscreen is going to come in a plastic tube, unfortunately.

• Purchasing & Shipping: Amazon!

• Good to know: There is also an SPF 50 available but we have not tested its consistency or looked at the ingredients.

• What’s Your Impact? While there is some healthy debate, mineral sunscreens tend to be better for you and for the environment compared to most chemical sunscreens. Mineral sunscreens tend to be much more reef-friendly as chemical sunscreens can kill aquatic life.

The Good:

✔ Reef-friendly and cruelty-free

✔ Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide are active ingredients

✔ Thinner consistency versus other mineral sunscreen

✔ Relatively affordable

The Bad:

✗ Though much better, still can leave a white cast

The Experience

Context: We have been trying to use mineral sunscreens especially when we are going for a run or just doing some work outside (aka - we aren’t expected to look our best!). We would love to find more mineral sunscreens that we can use on a daily basis and would be available for more skin tones. Pipette, ThinkSport, and Raw Elements are some of the previous brands we have tried.

• We mainly use this sunscreen during out runs on our face, neck, arms, and hands

• You have to work to get Hawaiian Tropics to blend in

• The consistency is a lot more milky than other sunscreens, so it’s much better on the body and actually pretty decent on the face

• It is not at all tinted, so there will be some sort of white cast

• Not nearly as tacky as some other sunscreens - it’s actually OK

The Cost

We assume that you will use just as much mineral sunscreen as you would any other sunscreen. Here we compare Hawaiian Tropics Mineral Milk Sunscreen with Pipette, MD Solar Sciences, Sun Bum, Australian Gold, Cerave, and La Roche-Posay sunscreens.

Money Report: Hawaiian Tropics stands up pretty well across the competition, near the cheaper end of the spectrum! We like that.

Our Recommendation:

Overall, Hawaiian Tropics Mineral Sun Milk with SPF 30 is a buy. While it does leave a bit of a white cast, the texture is liquid (‘milky’) and more easily spreadable compared to other products we’ve tried. Additionally, the Hawaiian Tropics is at the cheaper end, competing with Pipette in terms of cost.

We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!