Cellulose is an important functional element in plants where it forms structures that regulate water and nutrient transport and assemble into hierarchical structural units with high specific mechanical strength and toughness. Inspired by nature, our work in this area use cellulose in the form of renewable biological and biodegradable colloids, Cellulose Nanocrystals and Cellulose Nanofibrils, as starting materials to produce inks that are then used to print materials and devices. Specifically, our research has demonstrated that nanocellulose can be used to efficiently disperse functional nanomaterials and that it is possible to work with high nanocellulose loadings (up to 35 wt%) in these colloidal gel inks. The resulting sustainable technologies benefit from a resource and energy efficient digital manufacturing and have functionalities resulting both from the ink constituents and from the printed structure itself such as shape morphing, stimuli-responsiveness and tunable biodegradation. The applications that we target include lightweight composites, biomedical scaffolds and devices and integrated sensing structures for e.g. environmental, health and food quality monitoring.