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Silica-based porous materials are popular adsorbents and have achieved marked success. However, one of the main challenges is surface functionalization for obtaining better removal performances. Therefore, in this paper we developed a hollow silica adsorbent with a well-defined morphology via a sodium silicate route. Compared with the conventional silica-based porous adsorbents prepared by the modified Stöber method, the synthesized hollow silica support exhibits many advantages such as low-cost silica source, and using only industrial commodities as starting materials and water as solvent. Excitedly, the resulting matrix can be used as a powerful separation tool to deal with environmental pollution because it is easy to separate from wastewater simply by centrifugation without any modification. The experimental results of absorption and separation on the neutral red indicate that low-cost hollow silica supports can evidently increase dye loading and decrease the rate of dye desorbed in comparison to conventional hollow silica adsorbents obtained via the Stöber method. We exhibit the first example of constructing high ordered macroporous silica adsorbent by using a low-cost silica source. This silica-based macroporous material can be useful as a powerful separation tool to deal with environmental pollution because it is easy to separate simply by centrifugation without any modification. Interestingly, the absorption and separation for neutral red show that it can increase absorbent amount of dye and decrease the rate of dye desorbed in comparison to conventional hollow silica obtained via the Stöber method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]