Wal-Mart will have to pay $110 million in federal and state fines after the company entered a guilty plea for mishandling toxic waste and pesticides at its stores.
The company was fined for dumping toxic chemicals in trash bins and sewer systems. The San Francisco and Los Angeles city municipalities filed cases against the firm.
‘This case is as big as Wal-Mart is,“ Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Johns, who is the chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section in Los Angeles, told USA Today. ”This conduct is alleged to have taken place at every single Walmart in the country.”
Wal-Mart also pleaded guilty in Kansas City, Mo., for violating laws handling pesticides that were returned by customers.
Tammy Dickinson, US attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said that “truckloads of hazardous products, including more than two million pounds of pesticides, were improperly handled under Wal-Mart’s contract,” according to AFP.
It means that “Wal-Mart put the public and the environment at risk,” Ignacia Moreno, assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement obtained by AFP.
