Hemp (Cannabis sativa, L.) is an annual broadleafed plant (whose use has been recorded for over 2500 years) with rapid growth. It produces fibers and oleaginous seeds. Hemp cultivation has many advantages: it is a hardy crop that needs neither maintenance nor treatment before harvesting. It thus gives very high harvest yields. This plant has many applications in different sectors such as the textile and paper industries, cosmetology, construction, plastic manufacturing, and even for human and animal consumption. Recently, hemp-based materials (mainly in fibre form) have shown a novel centre of interest as adsorbents for metals. Hemp is attracting attention because of its low cost, abundance over most of the world, availability in large quantities and its useful physico-chemical characteristics: it contains cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and pectin as major constituents. Hemp may have potential in water treatment and has been the subject of several studies for metal removal. In the present study, the potential of using a hemp-based material in felt form for the first time as an adsorbent for removing metals from synthetic solutions is investigated. The ability of this material to remove a mixture of Cd, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni and Zn from aqueous solutions was evaluated in batch experiments at an initial pH between 4.9 and 5.2. Adsorption and kinetic experiments using synthetic polymetallic solutions showed that this non-conventional adsorbent exhibited strong adsorption capacities (1 g of hemp was able to remove 30 mg of metals present in 100 mL of solution) and the process was uniform and rapid (adsorption of metals reached equilibrium in 30 min). Interesting results were also obtained with real polymetallic effluents. Strong bonding of metal ions by carboxylic (present in hemicelluloses, pectin and lignin), phenolic (lignin and extractives), carbonyl (lignin) and hydroxyl (polysaccharides) groups were responsible for the adsorption through chemisorption mechanisms (complexation, ion exchange). These findings are significant for the future development of hemp-based materials for use as bag filters for metal removal from industrial effluents.