Funny. I was reading the article and when it said it was to reduce plastic waste, I thought the reasoning was that it would encourage people to reuse bottles, because once you have untethered, you have a precious bottle, namely one that doesn't annoy the hell out of you, so you want to hold on to it rather than buy another one and go through the effort of untethering again.

But as I kept reading, it turned out it was about discouraging littering with caps.