<p>The pharmaceutical products, like antibiotics and anti-inflammatory agents, are being persisted as pollutants in water bodies, which have a great impact on aquatic life and human life, as these may accumulate in the food chain and cause aquatic ecosystem disruption. In this work, a new high-performance photocatalyst, the ternary AC@TiO₂@WO₃ heterojunction, based on activated carbon derived from pine waste as green and low-cost support, is proposed with the intention of improving the semiconductor coupling and thus photocatalytic efficiency of the ternary system. TiO₂ was initially coated on the biomass carbon, then WO₃ was deposited; the composite obtained exhibited enhanced light harvesting, smaller bandgap energy, and stronger charge-transfer routes based on a Z-scheme system. The Pine-AC@TiO₂@WO₃ nanocomposite exhibited a high photocatalytic activity under UV light for the degradation of diclofenac (DCF) and cefazolin (CFZ), with degradation efficiency of about 97.4% for DCF and 94.6% for CFZ within 60 min. The efficiency of the degradation was largely dependent on several operating parameters such as: the pH of the solution, the irradiation time, the catalyst dosage, the initial concentration of pollutant, the power of the UV lamp, and the distance between the sample and the lamp. Scavenging experiments established that OH• and O₂•⁻ radicals were the predominant reactive species. The kinetic study indicated that the degradation conformed to a pseudo-second-order model, which revealed that the process was primarily controlled by the surface reaction and chemisorption. Furthermore, the catalyst exhibited good stability and recyclability by retaining high degradation efficiency for six successive runs. These findings highlight the potential of biomass-derived carbon-based heterojunctions as efficient, sustainable photocatalysts for wastewater treatment applications.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>