IKEA has announced it will release Disassembly Instructions for its products

This has the potential to avert numerous heated exchanges.

There's no denying that for many people, assembling and disassembling IKEA furniture is an arduous task in the extreme. While there are already instructions to "help" you put the furniture together in a safe and only mildly frustrating way, until this point, if you wanted to take your furniture apart and move it to another room or house, you'd largely need to do it on the fly. But IKEA has now flipped the script on its famous instruction manual by launching Disassembly Instructions, a set of guides aimed at making disassembling its furniture easier than ever before. Now, from initial observations we think the assembler in that picture is far too happy at every stage for it to be entirely believable. IKEA said the aim of the instructions is to encourage consumers to keep their furniture for longer, helping extend the piece’s life cycle. Hege Sæbjørnsen, Country Sustainability Manager at IKEA UK & Ireland, said: “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do at IKEA and we remain committed to introducing new ways to promote circular consumption, in order to help meet our goal of becoming a fully circular and climate positive business by 2030, in addition to making sustainable living accessible and affordable to all. “In the past three years we have put a great deal of effort into understanding and defining what a truly circular value chain means for IKEA, and as such, we want to take circular consumption mainstream and make it easier than ever for customers to acquire, care for and pass on products such as by repairing, reusing, reselling, and recycling them. “Alongside other initiatives like Buy Back, we hope the reverse manuals inspire people to re-think their consumption habits by extending the life cycle of our products and, together taking small steps, to help reverse against climate change at this critical time.” Disassembly instructions for some of its top selling products are available to view and download online.