Green synthesis of seaweed-macro algae based cadmium oxide-zinc oxide (SCZ) nanoparticles was prepared by the simple chemical precipitation method. The functional group characteristics and crystalline properties of the nanoparticles were analyzed by Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy and Xray diffraction analysis. The optical band gap energy of SCZ nanoparticles showed in lower value (3.11 eV), these can be due to the incorporation of seaweed (SW) and cadmium oxide (CdO). Small fiber like seaweed constituent was entangled over the CdO-ZnO nanoparticles, these were confirmed with High resolution scanning electron microscope and Field emission gun-transmission electron microscope analysis. The particle size of SCZ nanoparticles was obtained in the range of 20-50 nm. Thermal characteristics of SCZ nanoparticles have higher stability than SW and SW-ZnO. The photo catalytic degradation performance of SCZ nanoparticles was significantly improved and their efficiency was achieved to 99.57, 95.2 and 94.3%, under sunlight, visible light and UV light irradiation using RB198 dye molecules, respectively. The higher percentage of RB198 dyes degraded within 15 min interval under sunlight irradiation. In addition, their photo degradation characteristics of nanoparticles were further tested to pollutants of phenol solution. These results indicate that the surfactant based CdO-ZnO nanoparticles could be employed as an efficient photo catalyst for the degradation of industrial effluents. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.