Environmental pollution has become one of the great challenges to the sustainable development of human society. Wastewater discharged from chemical, smelting and nuclear fuel cycle processes contain a lot of heavy metal ions, organic matter, and radionuclides. If discharged without treatment, it will bring great harm to the environment. The adsorption method for wastewater treatment has many advantages such as high efficiency, simple operation, no by-products, recyclability, and no secondary pollution, thus making it one of the significant methods for wastewater treatment. Due to the low cost, abundance in raw materials, and renewability of agroforestry waste biomass, the adsorption materials prepared on the basis of it are widely studied. In this paper, the research focuses on biochar, cellulose, and lignin, which are prepared from agroforestry waste biomass as raw materials, the preparation and modification methods of biochar, modification methods of natural cellulose, methods of modifying lignin, and their application in wastewater treatment are reviewed. The effects of adsorption properties on the adsorption of pollutants in water are discussed from the aspects of raw materials, preparation process, and modification methods. The problems of pollutant adsorption by biomass-based adsorption materials are pointed out and an outlook on their future research direction is made.