In the era of rapid industrialization, the effluent treatment has become important area of investigation. The green and sustainable technology is the need of the modern society. Many industries emit the pollutants through effluent. The presence of organic matter is major environmental concern in many industries. The distillery effluent contains large amount of organic matter in it. In the present investigation adsorption with wood charcoal activated carbon was used for organic matter removal in batch experiments. The optimum values of the parameters like contact time, initial concentration, pH and adsorbent dose was obtained. The data was analyzed for isotherm and kinetic studies. For 100 ml of effluent with 5997 mg/l initial COD, the optimum parameters were, contact time of 40 minutes, adsorbent dose of 8 grams and pH of 7. The solute uptake followed both, Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm reasonably well. First order kinetic expression explained the solute uptake more accurately than second order. Though second order equation also satisfactory described the solute uptake.