Australia did not ban asbestos outright until 31 December 2003, and it was used in Australian building products for most of the century before that. The NSW Government’s own estimate is that around one in three houses built before 1990 contains asbestos somewhere. In Sydney that is a very large share of the housing stock, and it is why this is a routine job rather than an emergency in most cases.
Bonded and friable are two different jobs
Almost everything we pull out of Sydney homes is bonded (non-friable) asbestos — fibres locked into a cement matrix. Fibro wall and ceiling sheeting, eaves, corrugated garage roofing, boundary fencing. Bonded material is stable while it is intact. It becomes dangerous when it is broken, cut, drilled, sanded, water-blasted or left to weather for decades.
Friable asbestos is material you could crumble to powder in your hand when it is dry: pipe and boiler lagging, sprayed insulation, some backing materials — and, importantly, bonded material that has been burnt, smashed or badly degraded. Friable work is a different category in law. It requires a Class A licence for any quantity at all, the area sealed under controlled conditions, air monitoring while the work runs, and a clearance certificate issued by a licensed asbestos assessor before anyone goes back in.
The distinction matters to you for two reasons: it is the single biggest driver of what the job costs, and it is the most common reason one quote comes in dramatically under the others. A job priced as bonded when the material is actually friable is not a bargain.
What “licensed” actually means here
In NSW an unlicensed person may remove up to 10 m² of non-friable asbestos in total — and that 10 m² is cumulative, not per job. Above that it is licensed work: a Class B licence for non-friable, a Class A licence for anything friable. Licensed removal also has to be notified to SafeWork NSW before it starts, which is part of why a licensed job has a lead time and a back-yard job does not.
You can check any removalist’s licence yourself, free, on the NSW public licence register. We would rather you did.
What you are left holding at the end
Removal is only half of what you are paying for. The other half is that the waste leaves your property lawfully and that you can prove it did — which matters at sale, at insurance claim time, and to any builder working after us.
Asbestos is a regulated waste stream in NSW. It has to be wrapped, labelled, transported and received at a facility licensed to accept asbestos, and moving more than 10 m² or 100 kg of it requires the load to be tracked through the EPA’s WasteLocate system. You get the disposal documentation with your invoice, and on Class A work you also get the clearance certificate.
Not sure what you are looking at yet? Start with what asbestos looks like, or send us a photo from a safe distance. If you want the number before the visit, the cost guide sets out what drives the price.
