Natural cotton, featuring abundant oxygen-containing functional groups, has been utilized as a reductant to synthesize Ag nanoparticles on its surface. Through the facile and environment-friendly reduction process, the fibrous Ag/cotton composite (FAC) was conveniently synthesized. Various characterization techniques including XRD, XPS, TEM, SEM, EDS and FT-IR had been utilized to study the material microstructure and surface properties. The resulting FAC exhibited favorable activity on the catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol with high reaction rate. Moreover, the fibrous Ag/cotton composites were capable to form a desirable catalytic mat for catalyzing and simultaneous product separation. Reactants passing through the mat could be catalytically transformed to product, which is of great significance for water treatment. Such catalyst (FAC) was thus expected to have the potential as a highly efficient, cost-effective and eco-friendly catalyst for industrial applications. More importantly, this newly developed synthetic methodology could serve as a general tool to design and synthesize other metal/biomass composites catalysts for a wider range of catalytic applications. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.