Before the advent of PowerShell 5.0, to clear the recycler, you would have to manually delete the content of the hidden $Recycle.Bin folder in the root of all drives that have a recycler.
Some authors recommended the use of a COM object called Shell.Application, too, which tends to be unreliable because the recycler may not be visible at all times, depending on your Explorer settings.
Fortunately, PowerShell 5.0 finally comes with a Clear-RecycleBin cmdlet.
