A novel and simple approach to sorptive materials for the extraction of organic compounds from environmental samples is presented. It entails the use of glass fiber fabric strips coated with a customized poly(acrylate) (PA) formulation as extraction medium. Analytes were enriched by means of shaking of the PA strip in the sample and then subsequently thermally desorbed and analyzed by GC-MS. The performance of the sorptive materials was evaluated by the enrichment of compounds with different polarities (phenols, hexachlorobenzene and hexachlorocyclohexanes) from water samples. Parameters that affect the extraction process such as pH, ionic strength of the solvent, mixing mechanism, extraction time and desorption conditions were investigated. The extraction abilities of the PA extraction medium were compared with that of commercially available poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) Twisters. The results revealed that the new material shows higher affinity for phenolic compounds presumably due to the presence of polar groups. The partition coefficients for the PA strips estimated in this work were up to 15 times higher than for the PDMS Twister, resulting in higher recoveries and lower detection limits. The method was applied for the quantification of the aforementioned compounds in contaminated surface water samples from Bitterfeld (Germany). Using both PA strips and PDMS Twisters, good agreement of the extraction data was achieved.