Sweet potato peels was used for the removal of Cd (II) from aqueous solutions. The residue was characterised using SEM, EDX, XRF, N2 BET, TGA and ATR-FTIR. Sorption of Cd (II) was carried out by varying pH, contact time and initial ion concentration at 25 °C and the results showed a strong dependence of the ion removal on the adsorbate pH with optimum observed at pH 7. Kinetics of Cd (II) sorption indicates optimum time of 180 min and the removal of Cd (II) occurred via a fast initial uptake. This was modelled using the pseudo first, pseudo-second and intraparticle diffusion models. The pseudo-first order gave a better description of the uptake kinetics than the pseudo-second order model with an r2 value of 0.99. The intraparticle-diffusion model showed that sorption had multi-linear steps indicating that the intraparticle-diffusion is not the only rate controlling step in Cd (II) sorption. FTIR analysis of the PTPS before and after adsorption of Cd (II) indicates that some functional groups such as hydroxyl, carbonyl and carboxylate groups may be involved in metal ion sorption. Isotherm modelling of Cd (II) sorption was carried out using the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms using a non-linear optimisation. The Langmuir isotherm gave a better fit for Cd (II) sorption and maximum loading capacity (qmax) was 18 mg g−1 with an isotherm constant of 5.21 × 10−3 l mg−1 and r2 value of 0.99 at 25 °C. Hence, the PTPS residue was found to be a promising adsorbent for Cd (II) removal from aqueous streams.