If you just drive by, you would never know. On one side of the road, the Koolau mountains stand, proud as can be. On the other, the span of blue stretches from the white sand beach to Manana, Rabbit Island, and the cliffs below the Makapuu lighthouse.

But between the two is a mountain of garbage, a sea of trash.

On 9:30 on a weekday morning, there are no footprints on Kaupo Beach. This stretch of sand, just north of busy Makapuu Beach and the Makai Research Pier, is quiet except for the roar of traffic from Kalanianaole Highway. Ciera Obando, 29, is there with her little boy, Azzure, picking up trash in the bushes.

“It’s shocking that this got so out of hand,” she says. “This is a gorgeous beach.”

Obando is a volunteer with 808Cleanups, a group that organizes work days at sites around the island. 808Cleanups held a big work day at Kaupo in September and has organized follow-up work days since then. It’s a big job. There isn’t just one pile of trash. It covers close to a mile of beach, though hidden in the bushes.

“You almost need a bulldozer,” Obando says as she’s picking up bottles, cans, old golf clubs and broken fishing poles with her gloved hands. “Everything is piled on top of each other. Layers and layers. It’s almost integrated into the soil.”

There’s furniture down there — a queen-sized pillow top mattress, an Archie Bunker-type upholstered chair — just sitting in the sand and the dirt and garbage. There had been a homeless encampment at the spot. You can see where someone constructed a sort-of living room, pushing the sand into a level platform reinforced with two-by-fours on all sides. The sandy floor was then covered with an old carpet — someone’s beachfront domicile hidden from the highway by a screen of haole koa bushes.

Those big pieces of carpet are strewn all over the bushes. They’re wet from rain and very heavy. It takes a team of strong backs and arms to roll and carry them up the hill for disposal. On one recent work day, volunteers bagged smaller items and made 10 truck runs to the dump. There is still much more to do.

Volunteers think some of the mess is due to people just dumping their household rubbish off the side of the road.

As Obando works, 5-year-old Azzure scampers around her, his long hair flying in the breeze. He is already a veteran of such work days. “I hope when he’s older, he’ll remember this and encourage his friends to be more respectful of the land,” Obando says.

Some of the volunteers have been out in the water with snorkels. They see cans and bottles out in the reef. The garbage on land is all slowly making its way to the ocean.

There are workdays planned for the next several Mondays starting at 9 a.m. More information can be found at 808cleanups.org.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.