Food-Waste-Derived Sorbents for Sample Preparation: Recent Trends, Gaps and Challenges

Food-waste-derived sorbents have gained interest as low-cost and abundant materials. Compared to conventional sorbents, they offer advantages such as renewable origin, simple preparation, and alignment with circular economy principles. This review summarizes recent studies over the last two years (2024–2025) that report the use of food waste as sorbent materials for analytical sample preparation. Most of the reviewed works focus on two main groups of target compounds, namely contaminants and drugs or bioactive compounds. In terms of food sources, a prevalence of plant-based, lignocellulosic residues is observed with a strong contribution from Asian countries. The review discusses the main types of food waste employed, their role in green analytical chemistry, and the main challenges, limitations, and perspectives identified in the literature. This work provides an updated overview of this growing research area and supports the development of more sustainable sample preparation strategies within food systems. • Food-waste-derived sorbents can be greener and more sustainable and accessible options for sample preparation • Biochar-based materials dominate recent food-waste sorbent applications • Contaminants and pharmaceuticals are the main target analytes in current studies • Reusability and miniaturized extraction formats improve greenness and efficiency • Key gaps remain in scalability, standardization, and real-world and larger scale applications