IRNA � Iran Vice-President and the head of the Department of Environment (DoE) Isa Kalantari on Tuesday exchanged views with Ambassador of Ecuador to Iran Ortega Almedia on ways to expand cooperation on protection of environment.

In this meeting, held at the Department of Environment, both sides discussed issues such as the state of the environment in Ecuador and Iran, air pollution, the quality of fuel, pollution of the environment by plastics and know-how for disposal of the industrial wastes.

'In Tehran, since the beginning of the Iranian year, for the first time in the last 25 years, in the first 60 days of the year, we did not even have one day of unhealthy weather, in fact 30 days of clean air and 30 days of air was relatively clean,' Kalantari said.

He added that better standard of fossil fuels and stricter monitoring of technical inspections of cars, are the main reasons for the decline in air pollution in Iran.

The ambassador to Ecuador in Tehran said: Iran is more beautiful and better than what even the Iranian government introduces and, I think, you would better embark on publicity campaign to introduce Iran and its beauties to the world.

'The people of Ecuador have a lot of awareness about the environment and many environmental education, for example, the use of plastics is prohibited on the islands,' Ortega Almedia said.