In recent decades, as an adverse effect of global population growth, contaminants of emergingconcern (CECs) are continuously released into the environment, resulting in a huge threat tohuman health and aquatic ecosystems. Traditional methods for wastewater treatment are notadequate enough to tackle the growing complexity of these contaminants found in wastewatertoday. As environmental standards become more stringent, the need for innovative, efficienttreatment solutions has never been greater. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), especiallysulfate radical-based AOPs, represent a cutting-edge solution designed to avoid secondarycontamination by oxidizing CECs to biodegradable or harmless substances, carbon-dioxideand water. The addition of a heterogeneous catalyst into the system enables the highefficiency and easy operation of the process, as well as low energy consumption. In relation tothis, the design of appropriate catalysts for AOPs still remains an important challenge sincetheir synthesis has to follow the principles of green chemistry implying the replacement ofconventional metal-based catalysts with the metal-free ones. Biomass waste reutilization, ashighly desired in the environmental engineering, can be used for the production of carbonmaterial – biochar (pyrochar and hydrochar), serving as a green catalyst for persulfatemediatedoxidation of CECs. In this study, one series of non-metal-doped pyrochar-basedcatalysts was prepared using a facile one-pot green strategy with urea and boric acid mixedwith pinewood sawdust. The obtained singe- and double-doped (N, (B)-) samples of pyrocharwere used to activate peroxydisulfate (PDS) for the removal of 25 CECs from the watersolution model mixture (30 μg/l concentration of each compound) – 15 pesticides and 10pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs). Compared with the pristine pyrochar, thecatalytic activity of all doped samples was significantly higher, resulted from the enhancedadsorption capacity for all tested CECs. The obtained B-doped catalyst exhibited excellentcapability to boost PDS activation for almost 100% removal of 12 pesticides and 9 PhACswithin 15 min. The introduced boron species, acting as Lewis acid sites, enhanced the surfaceaffinity towards PDS and modulated the electronic structure of carbon matrix resulting in anincreased electron transfer rate. More importantly, the high stability of boron sites enabled asuperior recyclability of this catalyst for up to four cycles making it a promising candidate forpractical applications in the CECs removal from wastewater.