In Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (1), pp 419–425, Lizhi Zhang et al. report synthesis and characterization of functional and easily recyclable mesoporous TiO2 adsorbents produced exploiting bio-hydrogels (in particular, calcium alginate) as templates to create microbeads with reproducible hierarchical porosity in large scale. This topic becomes now actively addressed in the view of increasing environmental concern world over. Cheap and efficient approaches are highly requested.