of these schemes is that computers gathered through recycling drives are often shipped to developing countries where environmental standards are less strict than in North America and Europe. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition estimates that 80% of the post-consumer e-waste collected for recycling is shipped abroad to countries such as China and India. In 2011, the collection rate of e-waste is still very low, even in the most ecology-responsible countries like France. In this country, e-waste collection is still at a 14% annual rate between electronic equipment sold and e-waste collected for 2006 to 2009. The recycling of old computers raises an important privacy issue. The old storage devices still hold private information, such as emails, passwords, and credit card numbers, which can be recovered simply by someone's using software available freely on the Internet. Deletion of a file does not actually remove the file from the hard drive. Before recycling a computer, users should remove the hard drive, or hard drives if there is more than one, and physically destroy it or store it somewhere safe. There are some authorized hardware recycling companies to whom the computer may be given for recycling, and they typically sign a non-disclosure agreement. Cloud computing Cloud computing addresses two major ICT challenges related to Green computing – energy usage and resource consumption. Virtualization, dynamic provisioning environment, multi-tenancy, green data center approaches are enabling cloud computing to lower carbon emissions and energy usage up to a great extent. Large enterprises and small businesses can reduce their direct energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30% and 90% respectively by moving certain on-premises applications into the cloud. One common example includes online shopping that helps people purchase products and services over the Internet without requiring them to drive and waste fuel to reach out to the physical shop, which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emission related to travel. Edge Computing New technologies such as edge and fog computing are a solution to reducing energy consumption. These technologies allow redistributing computation near the use, thus reducing energy costs in the network. Furthermore, having smaller data centers, the energy used in operations such as refrigerating and maintenance gets largely reduced. Remote work Remote work using teleconference and telepresence technologies are often implemented in green computing initiatives. The advantages are many; increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel, and increased profit margins as