For the past few weeks I’ve had an issue on my Macbook Pro – the trash wouldn’t empty!! The spinning beachball would just keep on spinning until I force restarted Finder.

The solution for this was quite simple.

1. Open a ‘Terminal’ session
2. Run the following command:
   rm -Rf ~/.Trash/*
3. Done! Trash empty!

Thanks to Macconsultant at Superuser.com for the answer!