The origins of surface engineering lie in antiquity, with the practices in ancient Greece and China of hardening,tempering and crude form of case hardening using solid organic materials. The formation of the International Federation for Heat Treatment in 1971 later to include Surface Engineering has been pre-eminent in the globalisation of the rapidly developing discipline of surface engineering. The dominant effect of environmental aspects of surface engineering are discussed regarding the impact for change to light weight materials and the adoption of environmentally friendly plasma technologies.