Changing attitudes is a major goal of environmental education. Some environmental education organizations focus on increasing peoples' love of the earth and connection to natural places, whether these places are a vast wilderness or a small urban garden. School gardening programs and organizations like Outward Bound fall into this category, as do urban nature centers and natural history museums. The idea is that by creating a connection with nature, people will feel more inclined to protect it and to change their behaviors so as to have less of an impact on the earth.
Changing peoples' understanding of their connections to the broader environment is part of changing attitudes. Environmental education that focuses on attitudes also bridges the two broad goals of environmental education by focusing on humans' connection to the environment. After they introduce people to natural places and encourage them to love these places, environmental educators ask people to think about their connection to these environments. For example, people might consider how their personal habits are connected to forested areas. They could conclude that their use of new rather than recycled paper has an impact on the amount of forest that is cut for paper pulp.
The other broad goal of environmental education is to change peoples' actions. While it is very important to love natural places, it is just as important to become stewards of these places through everyday actions. Once people understand natural places and understand their role in them, they can be more easily moved to undertake actions that will protect these places. These actions take many forms. Some actions focus on the restoration and conservation of natural places. People might create gardens, reforest degraded spaces or lobby to protect a wilderness area.
Changing peoples' actions also means asking people to change their lifestyle and become more environmentally friendly. Like stewardship-oriented action, lifestyle changes have benefits to the local and global environment. However, these actions are not as deeply connected to a particular piece of land. For example, people may decide that they want to save water. They begin using low-flow toilets and faucets and they water their lawn less in the summertime. These actions benefit water bodies by reducing water use and water pollution. Lifestyle changes can benefit local air, soil and water. Lifestyle changes like reducing consumption of a particular product can reduce the use of resources around the world, since many products are imported from elsewhere.