It's a situation we're all familiar with. Your basement or garage might be full of old things that you've removed from your house but know are too good to throw away. It's the same at DB. Every year, we take a lot of things out of active service. These can take almost any form: rail and construction vehicles, office furniture, IT hardware, tools, machinery or ICE train seats. However, they are often still in good condition and can be reused somewhere else. DB has come up with sustainable solutions for them.
Turning refuse into reuse
Thanks to our innovative online platform DB Resale, we ensure that a second life awaits all kinds of things that we no longer need. Every day, we upload a host of articles to our auction platform. Some of them need refurbishing, some are repurposed and some are as good as new.
Our resale site can include entire rail vehicles, engines or bogies, but it also features collector's items such as old station clocks and passenger seats. When necessary, we smarten things up and post them for sale on the platform.
Turning windows into sand
If something can no longer be reused, we strip it down to recover the materials, which can be put to work elsewhere as part of new products. For example, we turn the windows of our trains and construction equipment into sand for building sites. Every year, our activities generate a huge quantity of scrap metal, which we sell on to certified recycling companies. Recycling metal like this for reuse elsewhere has a real implication for the environment. Every year, DB Resale puts some 500,000 metric tons of metal-bearing waste back into recirculation. This represents a considerable reduction in the consumption of natural resources.
Find what you're looking for
DB Resale isn't just for buyers outside our Group: Internal users at DB have been able to search for recycled items and materials since spring 2020. For example, if something can no longer be used in our long-distance business, it can be repurposed for a new career in freight transport. This goes for everything from storage units for office materials to equipment from maintenance depots. In this way, everyone at DB can lengthen the lifespan of the items and materials that we use at work, thereby conserving valuable resources and protecting the environment.
