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A local mortuary, a beer distributor, a law firm and two heating-and-cooling companies make up a diverse group honored for their business ethics on Wednesday.

The Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona bestowed its annual ethics awards on the firms at a breakfast ceremony at the University of Arizona.

Evergreen Mortuary, Cemetery and Crematory; Golden Eagle Distributors Inc.; Snell & Wilmer LLP; Green Valley Cooling & Heating; and Perry Heating & Cooling became this year's winners out of a pool of 11 nominated businesses.

The Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona normally honors four businesses, but this year there was a tie between Green Valley Cooling & Heating and Perry Heating & Cooling, said Kim States, Tucson BBB spokeswoman.

Perry Heating & Cooling became the first local firm to win the award twice in the five-year history of the awards, States said. The company also garnered a BBB ethics award in 2005.

"We're very proud," said Courtney Ashbrook, chief financial officer for Perry.

Ashbrook thinks going through the nomination process two years ago helped the company hire Lute Olson as a spokesman, she said.

The company landed Olson around the same time it got the award the first time, and he put the company through similar scrutiny to the BBB's before he agreed to work with Perry, she said.

Of the remaining winners, Evergreen Mortuary has done business in Southern Arizona since 1907 and has received the National Funeral Directors Association Pursuit of Excellence Award for more than 20 years.

Snell & Wilmer was one of the first law firms in the country to create an independent, standing ethics committee to resolve ethical issues as they come up in the regular course of business.

"That's one of the reasons, I think, the judges gave us the award," said Curt Reimann, administrative partner for the firm.

The ethics committee has been around for about 20 years already, and it was created because law was evolving into something that seemed less than professional in the public eye, he said.

"We as a firm don't believe that that's right," he said.

Anyone — including customers, employees or the owner — can nominate a business, States said. And nominees don't have to be members of the BBB, although all five of this year's winners are.

Once a nomination is made, the BBB solicits from the business an entry that must meet seven criteria, in which the company "must demonstrate how they basically live and breathe ethics every day through every aspect of their business," she said.

Entries generally show how the business meets criteria, including how customers are dealt with, how policies and procedures incorporate ethics and how advertising incorporates ethics.

"It behooves them to submit examples," States said.

That includes copies of newspaper ads or scripts from broadcast ads, or pages from the company policy manual, she said.

"They've got to back it up. If it's not backed up or if it's even questionable that something was created quickly to back something up, it doesn't do so well," she said.

"It's very involved," said Perry's Ashbrook. "It's big, but it's so worth it. And it was really a way to get some of our better employees and customers and vendors involved."