We want to protect the environment. Printing on reams of paper that soon end up in the wastebasket does not correspond to our idea of environmental protection. That is why we are reducing the amount of materials we print out, such as brochures, files, pay statements and receipts. We are increasingly cutting paper out of everyday office life for our employees and customers by digitalizing numerous processing and archiving procedures.
Digital services for our passengers
In our push to greater sustainability, we are offering more services digitally and are increasingly focusing on paperless communication. Whether it's a digital receipt in the on-board catering, a daily newspaper and customer magazine for tablet & Co or less paper in the travel center - saving paper means saving resources.
Digital receipt in on-board catering
In our on-board catering, for example, we have introduced a receipt for cell phones. This gives our guests the choice of receiving a printed or digital receipt. It's very simple: after payment, the digital receipt can be downloaded as a JPEG file directly onto your cell phone using a QR code. How much paper is saved in the end is up to our guests. But the savings potential is huge.
DB Mobil online magazine
But we are also saving paper in other areas: our passengers can read numerous magazines and, in first class, various daily newspapers free of charge on the ICE Portal. Our customer magazine DB MOBIL has also said goodbye to the paper edition. Since 2023, the content has been published exclusively in digital form on the new website dbmobil.de. With more multimedia formats such as the DB MOBIL podcast, we are also responding to the increased interest in lifestyle topics related to sustainability and environmentally friendly mobility.
Less paper in our DB Travel Centers
We are making increased use of digital media for our customers. Our DB Travel Centers are one place you can see this in action: Less need for paper means more climate protection, which is part of our goals for the future. We are therefore reducing the volume of printed advertising materials at all Travel Centers with immediate effect. This will help us cut consumption of up to 50 metric tons of recycled paper and a lot of water every year.
Your Travel Guide - reach your destination without paper
However, this does not mean less service for our passengers. Because all important information is available digitally. Passengers can easily and conveniently find information about our connections in real time via the DB Navigator, the DB route agent or at bahn.de/reiseauskunft. Personal timetables can also be created online here, which can be printed out at ticket machines if desired. With our digital offering, we can save on the approximately 7.1 million printed route maps that passengers currently receive at our DB Travel Centers.
And we are going one step further: by dispensing with the "Your Travel Guide" leaflet, we are saving around 960 tons of recycled paper. From now on, we will inform passengers digitally about their route and possible connections on our information monitors in the trains or in the ICE Portal.
Digital services for our employees
It's not just our services for our passengers that are going digital, but also for our employees. Whether it's the digital employee archive, electronic invoicing or the new timetable database, we are saving paper in many places.
Less paper in "bitkasten"
Since March 2020, we have also expanded our digital service for employees. With the digital employee archive "bitkasten", monthly payslips and other personnel mail can be easily received and archived. Employees can also upload private receipts and store them securely. All digitally and without using paper. In future, we will be able to save up to four million payroll documents by post and thus many tons of paper per year.
We simplify the paperless accounting of business trips for our employees with our "Reisekosten" app. More than half of them already use this online service.
Digital reception as a pilot project
Our colleagues in Frankfurt have shown how simple it can be to save paper in the office. The reception in the Silver Tower office building has been digitalized in a pilot project. Visitors and suppliers check in digitally. This saves several thousands sheets of paper per month in Frankfurt alone. The software used will be introduced in other DB buildings too. In addition to visitor statistics being recorded, a digital system for managing lost property is also in the pipeline.
Electronic invoicing
DB Cargo implemented its eInvoice system in 2011, which enables invoices to be sent and received electronically upon request. Paperless invoicing is also used in other Group units. Furthermore a number of DB Group companies have stopped using paper where they can, for example when archiving files.
Less paper thanks to new timetable database
We are also reducing paper in our signaling centers. We control daily updated changes to the train schedule using a digital database, and do not have to print out changes on paper.
Our numerous digital initiatives save us a lot of space and reduce the paper we waste, which means we are reducing resource consumption and contributing to greater climate protection.
