Below the thresholds is a position, not a formality.
Most producers who fall below a state's threshold assume there is nothing to do. In California that is not the case — the exemption has to be applied for. In the other states there is no filing to make, but there is a position you have to be able to evidence, and it is re-tested every year rather than settled once.
When SB 54 took effect on May 1, 2026, producers had 30 days — until June 1, 2026 — to get on record. Small producers included: being under the revenue threshold does not remove the obligation to register and formally claim the exemption. It is not self-executing. Skip it and you can sit on the state's books as unregistered — delinquent — while believing you were exempt.
Missed the window? We can resolve it — quickly and defensibly.
The producer responsibility organisations do not determine who is exempt. That determination sits with the producer. Where nothing on file says a company is below the thresholds, an open account reads the same as an unmet obligation — and we have seen producers who genuinely qualified still accumulate delinquency notices and lose good standing. In Oregon, non-compliance is published by name.
We establish the position on the basis each programme actually applies, state by state and year by year. In California, where small producers cannot register with the PRO, we prepare the small producer exemption application filed directly with CalRecycle, with the evidence the regulations call for attached. And we assemble the exemption file itself — the calculation, its inputs and its assumptions, dated and ready to produce if a regulator or a retail partner asks.
The submission itself is made by your authorised representative, as the programmes require. Everything up to that point is ours.
Thresholds move and so do businesses. Each year we re-test the position in every state, prepare California's annual exemption re-filing — with current sales evidence — for your authorised representative to submit, and watch the California sales line — because the exemption there rests on a single number with no alternative route.
Producers below the thresholds, or close enough to them that the answer is not obvious. If your figures put you clearly in scope, the Compliance Blueprint is the right starting point instead.
Start with a free Status Check, or talk it through with a specialist.