With enhanced increasingly of environmental protection consciousness in China, some traditional refractories with good performance but bad for human beings and environment were challenged. The new idea of environment-friendly refractories was put forward recent years. Environment-friendly refractories was that carcinogenic substance and toxic substance which was bad for environment and human beings was not used in the production process, lots of dust was not produced in construction process, harmful gas and toxic substance was not produced in using process, and used residual materials should be with recycle value and not be as a kind of industrial refuse. Progress of development of environment-friendly refractories at home and abroad was collected in this paper, and the current status of some environment-friendly refractories such as new fluoride-free acid resistant material, chrome-free refractories, new bio-soluble refractory fiber, low temperature carbon ramming mix and wet and dust-free gunning mix were overviewed, in order to promote the development of refractory industries in China