Throughout history, new materials have been the foundation of disruptive technologies. From bronze, paper, and ceramics to steel, polymers, and semiconductors, each material enabled far-reaching advances and defined the era. Today, inspired by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all – another new class of materials is emerging—one with both the potential to alleviate environmental burden, provide radically new functions, and to challenge our notion of what constitutes a “material.” An extraordinary example is pollen, a discrete mesoscale compartment, which encapsulates, protects, and transports male genetic material. In this talk, I will introduce our ongoing efforts to explore the materials science of pollen and to transform pollen into a valuable commodity to produce pollen-based materials innovation as a sustainable solution to numerous outstanding environmental challenges.