After my recent upgrade to Snow Leopard, I found that emptying the trash was taking a long time. This morning I had deleted an install bundle and wanted to empty the trash. It had 2500 items and took forever to empty the trash.

There is a temporary work around till Apple tackles this issue. The problem is that trash is removing the files securely. This seems to be the root of the cause. When I unchecked the “Empty Trash Securely” option in Finder preferences, the problem has disappeared.

Try at your own discretion.