While industrial absorbents are typically associated in the popular mind with heavy industry and automotive maintenance users, they are, in fact, highly useful in many other environments, one of the most important of which is schools.

Public schools, trade schools, colleges and universities, all have environments or experience situations in which absorbents are fundamentally valuable. Spills and leaks happen. In many instances, simple mopping or wiping is either not efficient, not fast enough, or simply ineffective.

At the elementary school level, no doubt the simplest situation, food spills, vomit, plumbing leaks, toileting accidents, parking lot leaks are the most obvious applications for absorbents ranging from a variety of loose absorbents to pillows and absorbent pads. The most generally useful item to stock would be a granular absorbent that can be spread in a variety of areas and situations.

The environment of a middle school adds the cleanup situations that occur in cafeterias, physical education gymnasiums (locker and shower rooms) and in shop classrooms (printing equipment, metalworking, woodworking). To the granular absorbents it would be prudent to add at least oil absorbents and perhaps some absorbent mats or pads.

At the high school level the applications for absorbents multiply greatly. High schools typically have chemistry and biology labs with the daily risk of organic and toxic chemical spills; vocational education shops with heavy machine tools; automotive shops, and the accompanying certitude of oil and coolant leaks and spills; physical education facilities that can include swimming pools and their cleaning and chlorination chemicals and chance for major water leaks; and very extensive parking lots with oil, gasoline, and other automotive fluid leaks. High school cafeterias are usually much larger and busier than those in middle schools. Recommended: a selection of universal loose absorbents, oil absorbents, at least one toxic chemical spill response kit, and both absorbent pads and absorbent socks for shop spill problems.

College and university campuses approach the complexity of industrial facilities in their need for absorbent products. Any large university will have multiple food preparation facilities in student unions, dormitories, faculty clubs, and on-campus hotels; major athletic facilities comparable at times to professional sports operations; engineering and science labs and workshops with equipment equal to that found in factories, chemical plants, and pharmaceutical or biotechnology facilities. And medical schools, often associated with major universities, have all the absorbent needs of any hospital or clinic. The full gamut of absorbents can find a use in a university environment: universal, oil-only, hazardous materials, loose, in forms ranging from mats to absorbent rolls, absorbent socks, absorbent pillows, pads - conceivably even booms in special research facility situations.

To sum up: school environments vary enormously, from the relative quiet and simplicity of an elementary school in a small town to the vast, multi-part campuses of major state and private universities that have tens of thousands of students, faculty and staff. But they all share a need for absorbents that can handle the spills and leaks that are always and inevitably a part of the educational process.