This cat-themed planter is a great idea for an addition to your garden! It is visually appealing, but also helps the environment by recycling plastic products; and in this case, it's a milk jug! After cutting and painting the milk jug to fit the design, all you would need to do is pick out which plant you want to put in your planter and that's it!

Step 1: Identify the Problem

Plastics are filling landfills, taking up space instead of being recycled.

Step 2: Define Working Criteria and Goals

Goals

Make something useful from recycled products

Constraints / Criteria

Time Constraint
Can only used recyclable materials

Step 3: Research and Gather Data

(NationalGeographic.com)

91% of plastics are not recycled
It takes more than 400 years to degrade plastics
8.3 billion metric tons of plastic is made, but 6.3 billion metric tons become plastic waste

Step 4: Brainstorm and Create Ideas

Planter Ideas

Gold Planter
Marbled Paint
Geometric Design
Animals

Step 5: Analyze Potential Solutions

Final Decision...

Cat - the overall design is cute and would be a good inside decoration

Step 6: Develop and Test Models

Materials

Milk Jug
Scissors or Box Cutter
Paint (Spray Paint may be better)
Markers
Plant of your choosing

Step 7: Make the Decision

Although the cat idea can still work for the planter, the gallon milk jug is too wide to make just the body, so the design would have to be altered.

Instead, I made the front and back ends of the cat, and painted the sides of the milk jug green to mimic grass.

Step 8: Communicate and Specify

I cut the outline of the cat with scissors, which was good for the straighter cuts. However, when it came to cutting out the ears, it was difficult since it has to be curved, so a box cutter would probably have been a better tool to use then.

Depending on what plant(s) you decide to use should determine how tall you want your planter to be.

Step 9: Implement Changes

Although I did not have another milk jug at the time, I would have gotten a smaller milk jug (not a gallon sized) so the cat part of the design would have been consistent. Changing up the designs once in a while if you decide to ever make it again would be a good idea too!

Step 10: Post-Implementation Review and Assessment

Overall the project turned out fairly nice, although some ideas did not work out as well as I had planned them out to be.

The milk jug's bottom wasn't as slim as I thought it was so the design had to be altered just a little bit.
Since the bottom base is completely covered you wouldn't have to worry about the extra water seeping out from the dirt.