A novel durable and reliable eco-friendly activated charcoal (AC) plastic membrane sensor was established for the determination of nickel in real and spiked samples. Different amounts (1–8 mg) of AC were tested for the sensor preparation. The membrane containing 2 mg of activated charcoal showed the best performance. The Ni2+-sensor showed a Nernstian slope of 29.8 mV/decade over a wide concentration range of 5 × 10–6–5 × 10–2 M with the correlation coefficient for the determination of 0.9971 and detection limit of 2.0 × 10–6 M. The fabricated sensor showed fast response time (5 s) and was used for a long period of more than 4 months. The sensor exhibited a wide working pH range of 3.7–7.4. The sensor was applied for the determination of nickel in banana and organic solvents like methanol, ethanol and N,N-dimethylformamide with the average recovery of 100.0% and average RSD of 1.9%.