Don't toss those old milk jugs out just yet. Instead, grab a few kitchen tools and turn them into easy-to-use watering cans for your houseplants.

A viral meme claims the indents on milk jugs pop out when the milk is old, but that's false. The indents are for volume control of plastic jugs.

Memories, history fill old milk bottles. By News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Susan Tuz THE NEWS-TIMES Sep 21, 2004. Most of us have a bottle at home that we've kept because it caught our fancy.

"Why do milk jugs have these," a Redditor asked in a 2015 post in the r/whatisthis, for example. The thread was marked resolved after the group settled, incorrectly, on three explanations.

A viral meme claims the indents on milk jugs pop out when the milk is old, but that's false. The indents are for volume control of plastic jugs.

The new containers also store 50 percent more milk per cubic foot than the old jugs. That means more milk on each truck - reducing delivery trips and fuel costs.

Michigan Technological University. "3-D printing using old milk jugs." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2013 / 03 / 130301153645.htm (accessed June 2, 2025). Explore More ...

Memories, history fill old milk bottles. By News-Times, The (Danbury, CT) Sep 20, 2004. Perhaps it's an old soda bottle with a Coca Cola logo. Perhaps its a hand-blown bottle found in a curio shop.