In agriculture and the food industry, large amounts of vegetable waste are generated annually: straw, corn waste, nut shells, fruit kernels, etc. The problem of their disposal is extremely acute, and regularly people use the simplest methods that do not require further processing of this type of waste. An efficient way of recycling is to make sorbents out of it. In modern conditions of deficit and rising commodity prices, the search for new, cheapest methods is becoming more and more urgent. The origin of vegetable waste is an excellent annual renewable raw material base. Walnut shells and corn cobs were used as raw material samples for the production of sorbents. The carbonization was carried out at temperatures of 300, 400, 500, 600 and 700 °C. Researched properties of raw materials: moisture, ash content and yield of volatile components. The dependency of the sorbent yield on the final temperature was determined, the ash content and the sorption activity by iodine were determined. Based on the results of the study, the high quality of the sorbent obtained was noted. In this way, the use of plant waste as raw material for the production of sorbents allows not only to solve the problem of waste recycling, but also to obtain a high-quality product and reduce its cost.