This paper is a review of the environmental impact of lubricants and lubrication, from a chemical perspective. It is intended to give an overview of our current understanding and to provide some specific examples of how optimising lubricant chemistry can contribute to reducing the environmental impact of human activities. Lubricants affect this impact in many ways, but they have a particularly important contribution to make in relation to energy conservation, minimisation of waste and development of durable products. Truly green lubricants are those that optimise energy efficiency and minimise wear in the machinery which they lubricate and which have maximised service lifetimes in order to reduce the amount of lubricant required. Increasing importance of these criteria in lubricant selection and design is expected to lead to more widespread use of high performance synthetic basefluids and effect additives.