If you put a Recycle Bin on the desktop, you might empty it by right clicking it and click "Empty Recycle Bin" form the menu.
But you may have noticed that there is another option in the menu called "Delete" which is for deleting the Recycle Bin shortcut from the desktop.
I saw many people mistakenly clicking the "Delete" menu item instead of the correct "Empty Recycle Bin" for emptying the trash, so I consider this as a usability issue for this design.
One way to solve this issue is to replace the "Delete" menu item with other names such as "Remove this shortcut." Currently I don't have any better idea.