In recent decades, a growing worldwide trend of developing the biodegradable lubricants has been prevailing to form a speciifc ifeld of green chemistry and green engineering. Enhancement of biodegradability of unreadily biodegradable petroleum-based lubricants has as such become an urgent must. For over a decade the authors have been focusing on the im-provement of biodegradability of unreadily biodegradable lubricants such as petroleum-based lubricating oils and greases. A new idea of lubricant biodegradation enhancer was put forward by the authors with the aim to stimulate the biodegradation of unreadily biodegradable lubricants by incorporating the enhancer into the lubricants in order to t the lubricants into greener biodegradable ones and to help in situ bioremediation of lubricant-contaminated environment. This manuscript sum-marizes our recent efforts relating to the chemistry and technology of biodegradation enhancers for lubricants. Firstly, the chemistry of lubricant biodegradation enhancers was designed based on the principles of bioremediation for the treatment of hydrocarbon contaminated environment. Secondly, the ability of the designed biodegradation enhancers for increasing the biodegradability of unreadily biodegradable industrial lubricants was investigated through biodegradability evaluation tests, microbial population analysis, and biodegradation kinetics modeling. Finally, the impact of biodegradation enhancers on some crucial performance characteristics of lubricants such as lubricity and oxidation stability was tested via tribological evaluation and oxidation determinations. Our results have shown that the designed chemistry of nitrogenous and/or phos-phorous compounds such as lauroyl glutamine, oleoyl glycine, oleic diethanolamide phosphate and lauric diethanolamide borate was outstanding in boosting biodegradation of petroleum-based lubricants which was ascribed to increase the micro-bial population and decrease the oil-water interfacial tension during the biodegradation process. Lubricants doped with the biodegradation enhancers exhibited much better biodegradability and higher biodegradation rate in the surrounding soils which could be well modeled by the exponential biodegradation kinetics. Furthermore, as lubricant dopants, the biodegrada-tion enhancers also provided excellent capability in reducing friction and wear and in retarding oxidation of lubricants. In the nature of things, lubricant biodegradation enhancers, which are multi-functional not only in the improvement of biode-gradability, but also in the fortiifcation of lubricity and in the inhibition of oxidation of lubricants, are expected to be prom-ising as a new category of lubricant additives.