AbstractMany of the lubricants used in the world today cause environmental pollution through total‐loss applications, spillage, evaporation, and in other ways. To reduce this environmental damage, new lubricants that are rapidly biodegradable and ecologically non‐toxic have started to be developed and marketed. This paper discusses the introduction of environmentally friendly lubricants and their constituents, with particular emphasis on their environmental benefits, applications, the limits to their use, their technical performance characteristics, and relative cost aspects; many of these lubricants are based on vegetable oils and esters. Comparisons are also made in the paper with conventional mineral‐oil based mate