Stock Photo - PRODUCTION - 19 April 2023, Baden-Württemberg, Offenburg: Dirt sticks to the levers of a drilling rig for taking soil samples. When Deutsche Bahn builds a new tunnel or otherwise intervenes in the terrain, it extracts large quantities of excavated material from the earth in the process - several million tons per year in Germany alone. With a new startup idea, DB is returning the many tons of sand, gravel, clay and natural stone to the economic cycle and thus wants to conserve resources: The corporate startup Erdpool, which offers mineral raw materials from construction projects for sale directly on a digital marketplace, is intended to ensure this. In this way, raw materials that previously had to be disposed of as waste can be better utilized elsewhere - for example, clay stone in the brick industry. (to dpa: ""Deutsche Bahn markets excavated earth from tunnel projects"") Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth/dpa. - Offenburg/Baden-Württemberg/Germany