Purpose –Drawing on the new environmental paradigm of values theory, the purpose of this study is to address problems of “being green” from internal ethics and value perspectives, investigating whether organizational biospheric values can impact the green innovation performance, and providing references for enterprises to achieve green innovation performance via organizational environmental ethics and Top Management Team (TMT) faultlines. Design/methodology/approach – A time-lagged research design was used to test hypotheses with data covering 152 heavily polluting enterprises listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2018 to 2022. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS is used to test the hypotheses. Findings – The results show that the organizational biospheric values promote the performance of green innovation in both product and process, and the organizational environmental ethics plays mediation role partly. Furthermore, the physiological faultline of TMT negatively moderates the impact of the organizational biospheric values on organizational environmental ethics. Practical implications – The findings provide implications for enterprises, especially those of heavily polluting industies, to increase the awareness of organizational environmental ethics and values, and improve green innovation behaviors, all of which helps enterprises increase green innovation performance and seek a stable balance between economic development and environmental benefits. Originality/value – The study breaks the limitation of the existing literature which focuses on the influence of external push factors (e.g. environmental regulation), and bring new visions in enhancing green innovation performance, not only extending the new environmental paradigm of values theory, but also enriching the current studies in green management. Furthermore, this study also provides references for developing countries where heavily polluting industries pose threat to the natural environment.