Seeds of Peace

Each packet contains approximately 20 mammoth grey stripe sunflower seeds.

Sunflowers were used near Chernobyl to extract radionuclides cesium 137 and strontium 90 from contaminated ponds following the catastrophic nuclear reactor accident there. Now sunflowers have become the symbol of a world free of nuclear weapons. This came about after an extraordinary celebration of Ukraine achieving the status of a nuclear weapons free state. On June 1, 1996, Ukraine transferred the last of the 1900 nuclear warheads it had inherited from the former Soviet Union to Russia for dismantlement. Celebrating the occasion a few days later, the Defense Ministers of Ukraine, Russia, and the United States met at a former nuclear missile base in the Ukraine that once housed 80 SS-19 missiles aimed at the United States.