Manufactured globally on industrial scale, cyclodextrins (CD) are cyclic oligosaccharides produced by enzymatic conversion of starch. We daily use CD as unseen components of food, cosmetics, textiles and pharmaceutical excipients. The synthesis of active material composites from CD resources can enable or enlarge the effective utilization of these products in the battery industry with some economical as well as environmental benefits. New and simple strategies are here presented for the synthesis of nanostructured silicon and sulfur composite materials with carbonized hyper cross-linked CD (nanosponges) that show satisfactory performance as high capacity electrodes. For the sulfur cathode, the mesoporous carbon host strengthens the interaction with sulfur and limits polysulfide dissolution and shuttle effects. The embedding of silicon nanoparticles into the carbonized nanosponge allows to achieve high capacity and excellent cycling performance. Moreover, due to the high surface area of the silicon composite, the characteristics at the electrode/electrolyte interface dominate the overall electrochemical reversibility, opening a detailed analysis on the behavior of the material in different electrolytes. Finally, an integration of the Si/C and S/C composites is proposed to achieve a complete lithiated Si-S cell.