The possibility of cleaning petroleum products from waste water with composite filters manufactured from various waste products (cotton lint; wheat, millet, and sunflower husk; sawdust) is studied. As a result of studies it is established that waste products have a high absorption capacity and cleaning efficiency (88-89%) of oil contamination from waste water. A three-layer filter-absorbent is prepared with an internal layer of mixed cellulose-containing waste that is as good as Russian and overseas analogs.Environmental protection and rational use of natural resources, as noted at the meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on January 30, 2008, is an obligatory condition of stable economic development of the country and preservation of the health of the population. The state of the environment is currently evaluated as critical by the majority of specialists. Every year in Russia about 7 billion tons of various forms of waste materials is formed, from which only about 2 billion tons, or 28.6%, is used. During reprocessing, only an insignificant part of the many tons of waste products is treated, and this is connected with the varied nature of their composition, the lack of reliable utilization technology, and the complication of physicochemical processes. Within the Russian territory in waste dumps and stores about 80 billion tons of solid waste materials are accumulated, of which toxic wastes comprise more that 1.4 billion tons. According to official data, in dumps and yards for solid waste there are about ten thousand hectares of land. The existing situation with storing solid waste materials in Russia is a real threat to the health of the population and it reflects one side of the ecological crisis that exists within the country. In view of this, problems connected with secondary utilization of waste materials and cleaning of waste water from contaminants deserve special attention.Many methods for cleaning waste water (WW) are currently known. Most of them are expensive and complicated in performance; there is use of scarce chemical reagents. There is particular interest in inexpensive methods for cleaning WW, and this relates to absorption. An additional reduction in cost is accomplished by the use of absorbents based on waste products. This problem has been considered by the work of many researchers within Russia and abroad [1-9].Although it is not a new cleaning method, use of wood shavings for cleaning WW is promising due to the low cost of the method and the large amounts of this waste product [1]. In studying the absorption capacity of sawdust formed during processing of various types of wood (fir, willow, aspen, common pine, plantation maple, birch, oak, ash, etc.) it has been shown by experiment that the best absorption capacity is exhibited by wood with low density and average moisture content (the density of fir, willow, pine is 650 kg/m 3 ). In order to increase the absorption capacity different methods are used for modifying these absorbents. A treatment temperature of 100-300°C...