Anyone have problems with spray bottles that stop working?

[beanluc]

Seems like every spray bottle I get stops working after a couple of months. It's like the spring won't push the plunger/piston/whatever back out after squeezing the trigger.

(Sometimes they start leaking, too, but that's not the problem that drives me wild.)

The springs aren't broken, it's more like the cylinder/plunger/whatever is sticky. I can wiggle it back out and get a full trigger stroke again, but then it just sticks in the pressed position again.

I had one once which had the end of the piston/cylinder/whatever attached to the trigger, so I could basically work the trigger in two directions for a while: squeeze to spray and then pull to draw/re-set. This thing just broke right apart after a while though.

So this is my question:
Who else has this problem? Can it be avoided? Can it be fixed? Can I stop this landfill abuse and hydrocarbon waste?