A novel and eco-friendly one-step approach has been developed to fabricate magnetic lignosulfonate (MIS) with high performance in wastewater treatment. The obtained MIS was characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM, TEM, VSM. The results showed that MIS had a good magnetic behavior in an applied magnetic field and its saturation magnetization intensity was up to 43.98 emu/g. Moreover, MIS exhibited excellent adsorption properties for Cr (VI) (57.14 mg/g) and Rhodamine B (22.47 mg/g). Simultaneously, the adsorption kinetics and adsorption isotherm experiments indicated that the data was agreed well with the pseudo-second-order and Langmuir model, respectively. After five regeneration cycles, the desorption efficiencies of Cr(VI) and Rhodamine B could reach more than 70% and 85%, respectively. Hence, the magnetic lignosulfonate is a promising material as a highly adsorptive and recyclable adsorbent for removing metal ions and cationic pollutants in wastewater.